Your Teachers at Spirit Bear Power Yoga

Sara Laroche

Yoga is my chance to be exactly as I am. Yoga fosters my most self-loving, exuberant, liberating and heart-expanding moments. I am blessed to be both a student and a teacher of yoga and grateful to be a part of the wonderful Spirit Bear community.

“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” -- Franz Kafka

 Come to your mat, breathe, believe passionately, and create what you desire.

Alyson Friedlander

Yoga is truly special - it'is a practice accessible to everyone, regardless of age, body type, or background.  Not only does yoga stretch and strengthen my body, but it also stetches and strengthens my mind and spirit. I love the challenge and the intensity of this practice but at the same time I always leave class feeling energized.   Yoga is a great teacher of self and life in general, it keeps me grounded and present while teaching me self acceptance.  Through yoga I have met many wonderful people who bring so much joy to my life. I feel extremely lucky to be able to learn and grow every day from my teachers and students.

Lali Haines

I came to yoga at a time of major life change, after years of working long hours as a physician while becoming a wife and mother along the way. After 17 years of delivering babies, I gave up practicing obstetrics and reshaped my medical career. But those years took a toll physically: long hours with little sleep, and a neglect of exercise and good nutrition for myself, while giving all I could to my family and my patients. A good friend recommended I try heated flow yoga as a way to empower myself physically, while learning a practice that could help quiet my mind as
well. It took only one class for me to realize the power yoga would have in my life journey. I find a joy on my mat that keeps me smiling for the rest of the day. I hope to bring that same joy to my students.

Lali Haines is a certified registered yoga teacher, a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist and Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is on staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, and is an instructor at Harvard Medical School. She is delighted to be able to bring these two disciplines together, allowing yoga to be accessible to both new and seasoned practitioners throughout their pregnancy.

Clive Whittaker

Vinaysa Power Flow Yoga and Spirit Bear helped me find the thin healthy person that we all have inside of us. At 46 I walked into Spirit Bear suffering from weekly migraines and daily headaches.   Fran greeted me with a big smile and changed my life in 75 minutes, and the migraines and headaches disappeared within a few months, 40 pounds fell off and I feel like I’m 25 again. I can’t go a day without doing Yoga.

In the book by John Capouya “Real Men do Yoga”  he sums how to practice power Flow Yoga. It builds strength and helps improve our well being. What he missed is the enthusiasm, fun and community that we feel when we share our Yoga. Power.

Yoga is not what the average Gym member thinks. I’ve have seen even the toughest strongest members of our military smile and say “ that was hard work!  I can’t wait to come back.”

Teaching - It’s impossible to put into words the joy of seeing a fellow Yoga student grow and improve every time they come. Sharing a small variation of a pose that needs twice the energy to hold or seeing someone find a meditative state in the middle of the hardest workout that they have ever had fuels my passion for leading a class. I’m very grateful to everyone who comes to my classes and that has contributed to my growth as a teacher. Your energy and love for Yoga fuels mine for the Yoga world is truly is a mirror.

We practice Yoga and will all be students for the rest of our lives because the possibilities for improvement are endless.   I look forward to sharing, Namaste

Clive is third generation African, born in Zimbabwe. In his mid twenties, he spent five years as a professional sailor and crew on large yachts. He has been married for twenty two years to Lisa. They have two children, both in college. When he’s not teaching and practicing Yoga,  Clive works in Information Technology sales but we suspect that he is really thinking and doing Yoga every waking moment.

Ray Mucci

I found myself in a yoga class a few years ago in Southie.  My friend Jennifer dragged me along since I had been complaining about not being able to run due to an injury.   I had just eaten three slices of pizza but I thought, ok, it's only some stretching and meditating.  My first yogic lesson was learned that day, and I’ll happily pass it along to any student:  don't eat three slices of pizza and then go directly to a yoga class.  Other than the digestive issues I encountered that afternoon, I found that I really liked the class and thought it was a good alternate to running.   So... I was "yoga is a good workout" guy for quite some time. I didn't mind Oming and breathing and all that but I also didn't feel like I needed to take it to heart.   I built up my practice over that first year from once a week to almost daily.   I began noticing little changes in myself.  I was no longer getting that upset in traffic or similar situations, or if I did, it would pass rather quickly.  Hmm…Ok so maybe it's the yoga?  It was either the yoga, or the fact that I had fallen in love with avocados.  Subtly, I found my attitude shifting.  I’m a total klutz and am constantly falling, bumping into things and banging my head into stuff.  I found myself laughing one day after banging my head into a stairwell and then dropping three grocery bags worth of food into the stairwell (including avocados!).  Ok, definitely the yoga and this was the case throughout my life:  instead of becoming upset over trivial day to day life situations, unchangeable ones at that, I was light and I was laughing, even when applying ice to the egg on my head.   So I find myself here and now, still practicing, making time for it no matter how cluttered my schedule gets.  Yoga has changed my body, my mind and has cured me of chronic horrific low back pain that no doctor was able to diagnose.  I still love avocados too; I just try to not eat them right before class.

Krista Whalen

Krista is a long time student of meditation, relaxation techniques, and yoga. Her experience includes many different styles of yoga including Kripalu, Power Vinyasa, and Yoga/Pilates, and incorporates each into her life. A graduate of the ecclectic trainging at Frog Pond Yoga Centre, she brings their philosophy of 'teach-from-the-heart' to her classes and students. Krista believes that yoga meets you where you are and you just have to start from that space.

Fran Cote

At the suggestion of my daughter I went to a Baptiste Yoga class in Boston. It was incredible This powerful practice of movement & breath brought me to an inward contentment that I never realized possible. This powerful flow has become my passion and it became a natural progression for me to share this through my teaching.

I am 200 hour certified through Prana Power Yoga in Cambridge. I recently completed an eighty hour teacher training with Claire Este-MacDonald and Gregor Singleton at Baptiste Power Yoga Institute in Cambridge.
I have attended many workshops with Baron Baptiste, Bryan Kest, Beryl Bender Birch, Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea, Seane Corn, and others.

Maura Matarese

Maura received her certification through Prana Power Yoga in Cambridge and has been practicing yoga for over 10 years.  Maura describes her style of teaching as hatha yoga infused with a creative and fun vinyasa flow.  As a teacher, she stresses the importance of the student following their own rhythm by tuning into their breath.  It's an approach of wait, listen, and then flow. She is a Licensed psychotherapist (LMHC) in the state of Massachusetts and registered yoga teacher (R.Y.T.) through the Yoga Alliance.  As a therapist, she specializes in both traditional talk therapy and mind body techniques including yoga therapy.  She has also informally studied holistic health and nutrition and can provide responsible information on where how to seek this kind of treatment.

Pat Donaher

I began practicing yoga in 1996, in my last year of college. I was a saxophone performance major, and while I was good at many things on the saxophone (still am, I hope), I often sounded like a dying quail when I played. One of my mentors, Michael Cain, had started taking yoga, and thought it might help my sound, so I went. I enjoyed classes, my saxophone sound improved tremendously and I was generally more flexible, but I didn't quite "get yoga", and drifted in and out of a yoga practice through my twenties.

After grad school in Boston my practice was reignited when I found the Baptiste yoga studio and its excellent teachers, and my wonderful teacher David Vendetti. David sometimes describes his teaching as the Body Awakening; Baron Baptiste talks about personal revolution. Either set of words works. I found in yoga a new connection to and appreciation of my body and what it could do. I feel now that at 32, I'm physically in the best shape of my life.

For more information about Pat, please visit http://www.patdonaher.com/

Kristin Fitzsimons

Bio to come...

Jenna Jolnerovich

Yoga is a beautiful space in my life where I can always find peace and calm in the middle of uncertainty and chaos - whether it's external or internal. I initially introduced yoga into my life as a form of exercise to keep fit but as a result found so much more. I found a way to accept who I am, let go of judgment and ego, and just live in the moment.  Take it one movement and one breath at a time. After a consistent practice this awareness carried itself off the mat, out of the classroom and into a place where I brought more and more awareness and attention to what I do, what I think, and what I believe in. I had to learn how to let go of attachments and see what's important to me and what's not. I had to let go of a lot and start looking for things that nourished my life, body and soul in a much healthier way. And I am still learning. That's the beauty of yoga, it's an ongoing practice. You can always keep going and growing. And you can make mistakes. My goal is to encourage a fun, supportive and non-competitive atmosphere in each class where students can feel free to open up, no matter where they are on their mats or in their lives. I want to create space where students feel free to go within, with an open heart and mind, and enjoy the process of becoming more body, mind and spiritually aware. I want to be there to witness personal, physical, and emotional transformations, to see others develop, change and realize their inner potential.

Judith Ellen

I'm kidding. Yoga is fun, I'm hooked on it like a junkie, and i feel honored to teach it. My classes are student-centered, dynamic, and inspiring. Whether you are new to yoga or an experienced practitioner, come prepared to sweat, revitalize and restore the body, and quiet the mind.

And speaking of transcending, I am the co-founder of Transcend Consulting, a firm providing mindfulness based approaches to education, health and wellness, and cultural competence training services. I bring over 15 years of experience as an educator, yoga instructor and personal trainer to my work with adolescents, women, and historically under-served populations where I incorporate mindfulness-based techniques to develop curricula focusing on meditation, self-awareness, and stress reduction. If that isn't enough, I'm also a writer and created FEISTYWords, a women-only workshop which infuses writing and yoga as tools for self-exploration. Check out my street cred at http://feistywords.blogspot.com.

Christy - Studio Owner and Teacher

Bio to come...