Web Site: www.elinorecohen.com

Teacher Bio:
Elinore has over twenty years of movement and dance experience in the styles of ballet, lyrical, modern, and jazz in her repertoire; including a professional ballet career dancing with the Joffrey Ballet in the Corps de Ballet, and as a soloist. She was also on loan to the San Francisco Ballet as a seasonal dancer for several years. Elinore seemed to have a fulfilling ballet career until several injuries and health issues led her to rehabilitate her body and mind. So when she was seventeen she went off to college and pursued a degree in teacher education, and went on to get her Masters in Human Development, which led to teaching pre-k and kindergarten. With a love of education and yoga, Elinore pursued her passion for both and went on to complete her teacher trainings at Yoga Works in Santa Monica.

Elinore sees the journey within as the breath creating a vehicle for the body, and the body creating a vehicle for the mind to still itself, and transform itself. It is from the yoga practice, that the individual learns "practice", is the best of all instructions. Her classes blend Iyengar fundamentals and restorative postures with the aids of props, along side a strong Ashtanga influence of flow and feel for a synergistic, yet mindful vinyasa flow. Elinore's teaching style fuses a beautifully calming voice, with an equally engaging and supportive voice, for a distinctly creative, energetic, playful style, encouraging a courageous learning environment where fear dissipates, and hope evolves into taking risks, meeting challenges that move students into their next zones of proximal development within their yoga practice internally and externally. Elinore is highly skilled at teaching the individual learner, seeing their needs and meeting them to build a strong student-teacher relationship built on trust, love, and respect, leading to feeling comfortable in one's own skin, and a contentment and acceptance with what is, and what may be in one's yoga practice and life. Elinore's classes combine a love of movement, cultivating the idea of feeling the movements and internalizing yoga philosophy, attention to the breath and linking movements with breath, proper alignment, and specific attention to gross and subtle aspects of alignment, supported by traditional and creative hands-on adjustments, and particular attention to modifications and variations of poses securing a safe and open environment. And ultimately, the joy of assimilating and accommodating great gems of knowledge and wisdom deeply internalizing the feelings and senses of those movements and great mindfulness in the conscious unity of yoga?seeking the calmness within each of us.

Elinore's Note
I see yoga as conscious unity, and myself simply as a facilitator in the process of yoga, for the true teacher is within all of us. We are already our perfect self, we are already all that we need to be. We practice yoga to see ourselves as we really are, and know that our timing in life is always right. We practice yoga to know that when we gain freedom in the body, we are that much closer to freedom in the mind! We are all lit from with, so follow the journey within and live with intention! Embrace your unique gifts, and bestow them upon the world, love your imperfections, be proud, yet humble, and above all love yourself unconditionally.

Om shanti, shanti, shantihi

All Photography by Jason Gold www.jasongold.com