WILD LOTUS YOGA FAMILY
Sean Johnson
In classes I merge vinyasa and bhakti yoga – the yoga of the heart – through storytelling, singing, evocative playlists, poetic language and creative yoga flows. I love to create the possibility for students to feel and tune more deeply into guidance and inspiration from within.
I am a proud native of New Orleans a graduate of NOLA public schools K-12. I have a B.A. in Cultural Studies from The Evergreen State College and an M.A. in Creation Spirituality from the Naropa Institute, where I studied yoga and spirituality with teachers from many traditions.
I founded Wild Lotus in 2002 and am deeply grateful for all the people – our teachers, staff, students, and my family – who make the studio such a loving place to be. It’s also a joy to sing, play, and tour around the country with The Wild Lotus Band merging ancient mantras, roots, rock, gospel, and world grooves. My wife Farah and our cat Sasha light up my heart.
AC Lambeth
What inspires me is a love of language—the language of the mind, the soul, and the body. Yoga for me is the listening to and expression of these languages as a way of creating greater intimacy with our experiences and with each other. In my classes, I seek to cultivate the space for such awareness, blending mindful alignment with heart-centered movement. I often include pranayama, meditation, and chanting. In all my classes, I hope to inspire students to renew their relationships with themselves and their world, so that the practice and healing power of yoga extends beyond their mats.
A graduate of Soul School (2008-9), I am also trained in Anusara alignment and Tantrik philosophy. I received a BA from Naropa University and an MFA in Creative Writing from UNO. I recently stepped away from academia to write my second novel. I live with my husband, Bill Loehfelm, also an author, in the Garden District with our dog Josie.
Amalie Weil
My classes reflect my personal practice and draw directly from my experience. I utilize yoga to become more intimate with the self and the natural world. My practice includes a range of mindfulness techniques such as meditation, sound, poetry, pranayama and restorative. I am deeply influenced by nature and my classes often include seasonal and universal imagery.
I discovered Wild Lotus after returning home to New Orleans following extensive traveling. Coming from a five year home-based practice, I pursued Wild Lotus’s Soul School Teacher Training both as a way to deepen my knowledge and experience and to pursue a career in the spiritual field. After graduating, I enrolled in a six month mentorship program with the studio and started teaching regularly.
In my free time I can be found floating around Bayou St. John, meditating under City Park’s chime tree and on occasion disappearing for lengthier trips such as my most recent adventure hiking the Camino de Santiago. Stay connected to Amalie here: https://www.
Amanda Rubenstein Stern
When 9-11 happened, I was a gym rat known for hanging upside-down from the pull-up bar. The manager of the gym had the insight that people could find peace through their bodies, so she sent me to teacher-training. Although I’ve been teaching yoga for many years, I’ve never stopped being a student. I’ve studied in many different styles, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Jivamukti, Anusara, Bowspring, etc. My teaching melds what I’ve learned, reaching back even to modern dance at the University of Texas, into a lighthearted, alignment-driven vinyasa flow. I like to teach everyone, from students who have physical limitations to advanced practitioners. I think every class should offer options for everyone, no matter what their level.
The certification I draw on most is from White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. More recently, I studied bhakti with Sean Johnson of Wild Lotus, who inspired me to purchase my first harmonium. It may be a while before you see it class.
Andra Aitken
I practice because it reminds me to be in the moment, which gives me the clarity to progress in a loving way. I teach yoga in the hopes that people will come to know and love themselves more sincerely, and share that love with others. Yoga reminds me that the present moment is the best place to think and act from. In practice and in life, I encourage you to slow down, be light-hearted, breathe and move deliberately, and see what happens.
I took my first yoga class while working on my Architectural Thesis at Tulane. Amidst the stress and sleep-deprivation, yoga gave me peace and restoration. In addition to Soul School, I’ve had the privilege of completing Daniel Orlansky’s Yoga of Energy Flow.
I LOVE spending time with my dogs, husband, and friends, and watching Star Wars. Outside of teaching, I’m a freelance graphic designer, and I make oh so many things. Find me online here: AndraAitken.com
Ashley Weinstein
Bhakti yoga strongly influences my practice and teaching, which includes a mix of things that awaken the heart! There is an intention behind every class I teach and I share my love of poetry, dance, laughter, mythology, self-inquiry, creative sequencing, mantra/chanting, and uplifting music.
I love yoga because it’s a mind, body, heart medicine! It empowers and opens me, revealing my highest, truest, original self.
I completed Soul School at Wild Lotus in 2014. I am currently enrolled in an Advanced Yoga Psychology Teacher Training, diving deeper into the therapeutic approach of yoga, meditation, depth psychology, and neuroscience, exploring the transformations that take place on our mat. These holistic practices have inspired me to write a memoir about my personal journey of self-discovery and healing through yoga, mindfulness, travel, and love! When I am not teaching, you can also find me at the front desk of the studio or in my kitchen trying to master Thai food!
Aubree Thelen
I aim to guide students to find what is best for them, while being safe in their bodies. There are many versions of any pose, and by offering modifications, I encourage students to find their own shapes. My classes can be scaled up or down in intensity in that way, all while finding your own practice. I also like to bring a sense of humor to class – because if you can’t laugh or fall on your mat, where else can you?
I love yoga because it allows me to challenge myself or comfort myself on any given day, as well as notice and engage with new concepts and horizons as I move on my mat and through life.
I am inspired by science, psychology, books, and people. I also enjoy riding my road bike, Maxime, around New Orleans, hanging out with the beautiful soul that is my dog, Stella, and cooking – all of which act as moving meditations to me.
Celeste Schexnaydre
I invite students to leave their inner critic and bring their heart, creativity and inner warrior to the mat. I encourage a compassionate connection to self and a willingness to listen to what you need moment to moment.
My perspective on life is greatly influenced by my survivorship of several cancer diagnoses and my passion to live gratefully and joyfully. I believe strongly in the importance of self-care and creating a loving relationship with your whole self and to gently and respectfully meet yourself where you are. I love the fusion of the heart, spirit and body that my practice brings me and I always leave my mat in a different space than how I arrived. I bring these values for living with intention into my classes.
I completed Soul School and the mentorship program. My passions outside yoga are my work as art therapist, artist and mother to my precious daughter. I’m a native New Orleanian and love it.
Charlotte Mabry
My personal practice of yoga began at the age of 50 after retiring as a Professor from the LSU Dental School. As I practiced yoga I realized I was on a committed journey of continual learning of my body, mind, and spirit. After completing Soul School, I received a specialty certification in children’s yoga from Aruna Humphries, Young Yoga Masters. Yoga provides tools to travel into the center of ourselves, discovering “the authentic self” / soul; Bhakti. If I could have only learned these lessons as a child! I am impassioned to teach little yogis to learn how to use these tools. Yoga can heal and prevent those wounds found in childhood. My greatest gift as a teacher is helping children discover their “self-knowing within”, trusting and speaking it. I teach “You are important”, “Let me see your eyes, I am listening to you”! The miracle is watching them light up with delight when believing in who they are. Namaste!Coleen Maidlow
In class, I strive to integrate all sorts of movement modalities in fun and playful flows. I’m a huge body nerd (reveling in anatomy, biomechanics, natural movement, fascia, alignment), so I’m endlessly fascinated with finding fluidity and ease in the body, and the interplay of movement and meditation. I believe there’s poetry and magic in our bones, and I’m constantly exploring new ways we can be and move in our bodies.
I’m a Canadian transplant who found my way to Louisiana in 2005. As an impossibly shy and introverted soul, I’ve always found refuge in solitary activities like skiing, powerlifting, reading, yoga, and Nintendo. Yoga, especially, has stuck around like an old friend. These practices help me to get out of my head and let me reconnect with my body, my heart. I completed my training in Soul School and have an MA in English from UNO. I love cats and I dream of joining the circus.
Colin Myers
I love sharing the practices that inspire me, so in my classes we may sing Sanskrit mantras, send love and kindness to ourselves and into the world, or practice the quiet inquiry that comes when we allow ourselves to simply breathe. Be prepared to bring that awareness to the asana in ways that are invigorating and relaxing, and be prepared to discover truths and strengths you didn’t know you had.
I love that yoga doesn’t tell us what to believe, but rather shows us a rich tradition of practices and invites us to explore what happens when we engage. When I started regularly practicing, it was as if I had come home after a long, long journey. I have seen in my own life yoga’s power to heal the body, heart, and mind, and nothing excited me more than the opportunity to complete the teacher training at Wild Lotus so I could share this almost magic power with others.
Outside the studio, I play jazz trombone with my own band and as a sideman in a few other musical projects in and around New Orleans.
Dena Borman
In my classes, I encourage students to embrace their own unique practice, to coordinate movement with breath, and to find connections between their asana practice and everyday lives.
Yoga connects me more deeply to my physical, emotional and spiritual self, which allows me to live more intentionally, treat others with more kindness, and make decisions from a place of love and authenticity.
I am a graduate of Soul School, followed by the teacher apprenticeship program.
Off the mat, I am a singer, a music teacher, and a devoted New Orleans enthusiast!
Farah Gokturk
My passion is the study and practice of mindfulness & self-care as it relates to our day-to-day experience. In my Nourish & Flow classes I love to create the time and space for meditation, long, drawn out warm-ups, followed by a steady vinyasa flow.
I love taking long walks in the park, and moving my body in a variety of different ways. I am inspired by Nature and am passionate about food. I am moved by meditation, and often struck at how simple and yet deeply profound the practice of tuning into one’s breath is.
I’m a graduate of Soul School and am trained in Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra, Health Coaching, Thai Yoga, and Yoga Therapeutics. My teachers and influences include my husband Sean Johnson, Mitchel Bleier, Kate Rivera, Saul David Raye, Erich Schiffmann, the Wild Lotus Community, my family and friends, writers John O’Donohue and Joseph Campbell, and my beloved cat, Sasha.
Jamie Allen
My classes are an opportunity to embody the wholeness of yourself. We move with creative flows, killer tunes, and an invitation to inspire yourself and go deeper into your personal connection with the divine both on and off the mat. I want to provide a space for students to feel beautiful, loved, and supported, while encouraging curiosity.
In yoga I discovered a space to connect with, love, heal and nourish myself as I was, beyond judgement, in all my wholly-ness. The path to creating a deep connection with my soul began, and though I’ve strayed, it has always been there when I’ve chosen to return. After completing Soul School in 2013, I returned to apprentice and teach at Wild Lotus in the summer of 2016.
I am passionate about sustainability, recycling/repurposing to create more beauty and functionality. I believe every moment is an opportunity to learn from, experience, and connect with the richness and complexity of life as we know it.
Jessica Buckley
I incorporate Bhakti yoga into my classes with meditation and song. Encouraging students to have fun during their practice and let their inner light shine is my main goal. I love and cherish the healing aspects yoga and wish to share this love with others. I am a teacher at heart and consider my inspiration and joyful outlook to be the greatest gift I can offer my students.
I moved to New Orleans in 2012 from Birmingham, Alabama where I practiced at The Yoga Circle with some very inspirational yoga teachers. I immediately felt right at home with Wild Lotus. The amazing teachers and community feel drew me in. I completed Wild Lotus Yoga’s Soul School and began teaching at the studio in 2013. I currently teach our Sunday Night All Levels Flow, Uptown. This is such a special and mystical class time to me; the closing of one week and beginning a new.
Karen Rountree Palmer
My classes are a combination of restorative and flow. I like to incorporate a balance in order to care for the whole person. My classes tend to be more on the gentle side and I usually begin and end with a guided meditation and usually incorporate music into the class.
Yoga allows me to be, to look at life inside out, and to love.
I have practiced yoga for over fifteen years. In 2013-2014 I studied with Sean Johnson and Mitchel Bleier in Soul School Teacher Training. I continued studying Prenatal Yoga with Mamaste Yoga. I continually attend workshops and retreats to strengthen and grow in teaching and my own practice.
My passions…. Music, art, photography, animals, traveling…I love spending time with my loved ones. I am humbled and inspired on a daily basis by life. When I am not in the role of teacher, I am a counselor. I am truly grateful to do what I really love on a daily basis.
Kelley Gill
Bio coming soon.
Kerrie Partridge
My classes explore tapping into the strength we already hold and to find freedom in the possibilities that follow. I use music, meditation, and creative movement to give students the opportunity to find their personal practice within an ancient tradition.
Through my study of bhakti and physical alignment during Soul School, I have learned to take up residency in my whole body. This inspires me to share my knowledge of alignment and the creative elements of yoga, through the exploration of movement and breath. Yoga inspires me to play with the mundane and the unknown. It teaches me to soften while remaining rooted. It writes me love letters saying that I belong here. I am home.
Outside of the studio, I work with a program that teaches children to connect to themselves and the seeker, and a Gulf Coast native.
Laura Stell
As a nurse and yoga teacher, I’m amazed at the human capacity for healing. My intention is to invite students to slow down, move beyond habits and beliefs about their bodies, be attentive, curious and willing to explore, with breath as a constant support in movement or stillness. I seek to bring yoga to individuals of different abilities along the health spectrum.
Yoga helps chill the windmills of my monkey mind (sorry Patanjali!). Yoga found me in the 1970’s, and was a support and refuge during my college years and nursing school. I’ve seen the forms of practice and teaching shapeshift in the years since then, but the transformational essence of the teachings remains. My appreciation for the gifts of yoga has grown and deepened, through living in a yoga community at Kripalu and taking the practice on the road to Russia, as a yoga clown with Dr Patch Adams.
Lauren Best Shapiro
In my classes, I strive to create a safe environment for students to explore movement and breathe awareness with a sense of wonder and joy, free of self-judgment. I love to create musical playlists (a skill honed in the 1980s while pouring my heart into making cassette tape mixes) to support the practice.
In 2009, I participated in Soul School at Wild Lotus. My fascination with the breath developed in my work as an OT. Noticing how enhancing breath awareness positively impacted patients’ mood, quality of movement, and decreased their pain, I turned to yoga to deepen this understanding. I appreciate the way yoga informs my work as an OT, and how my therapeutic background enhances my yoga teaching.
I’m a native New Yorker who lived in Chicago before coming to this amazing, quirky and culturally rich city in 2004. I love teaching in New Orleans, with the reminders of creative possibilities, opportunities for new beginnings, resilience, acceptance, and community.
Lauren Sloan
Bio coming soon.
Libby Hoefer
Bio coming soon.
Madeleine Kelly
In class, expect a creative exploration of subtle awareness, and a strong encouragement to listen to your own intuition to develop a practice that is healing for where you are. My teaching emphasizes mindfulness, meditation, self-inquiry, intuitive movement, and the experience of the subtle body. I believe a yoga practice should be healing and strengthening not only in the physical sense, but also on an emotional, psychological, and energetic level.
I love yoga because it has allowed me become more loving in this lifetime. Every day, yoga continues to empower me to forgive, embrace, and heal myself. As a visual artist, figurative painter, face painter, muralist, and teacher, I am passionate about the healing power of creative practice, and exploring how art-making intersects and intertwines with spiritual practice.
In addition to completing Soul School here at Wild Lotus, I have studied Kundalini-based Hatha yoga and Meditation techniques with Agama Yoga in Thailand and Hridaya Yoga in Mexico.
Marion Tortorich
Teaching yoga continues to be an absolute joy for me. I am following my dream of being a writer, yoga teacher, musician, and artist, with a focus on feminism, social justice, and serving the holiness of life in its many forms. As I do my best to weave philosophy, spirituality, my gymnastics background, my love of different schools of alignment, and fun jams into an energetic flow, I am given the opportunity to travel deeper within myself and to find who I really am.
I attended the first Soul School Teacher Training and graduated at the ripe young age of 21. After teaching for several months, my journey took me to Austin. Upon returning to New Orleans, I returned to Wild Lotus and was ecstatic to reconnect with my roots and the studio. I have since attended a Prison Yoga Project Teacher Training, become a medical advocate for the Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response organization, and a Doula (birth assistant).
Martin Benson
In my classes I focus on alignment and the harmony between body, breath, and awareness. I tend to teach without music to further highlight the relationship between these elements.
I first found yoga after suffering from serious illness in my early twenties. After recovering from surgery, a close friend of mine invited me to a group meditation and pot luck dinner. I didn’t really know much about meditation, except from what I saw in Kung-Fu movies growing up. My first taste of stillness awakened something deep within me and intuitively I knew there was something there I needed to explore, which took me to India and eventually Soul School.
Yoga showed me things about my mind and body that I never knew. What I love most about yoga is that it moves against the current of our high speed, competitive, and results-based society. This discipline teaches me the peacefulness of patience, the art of process, and the joy of practice.
Met Salih
My class mainly focuses on having fun! Letting go, centering, mindfulness, reenergizing and becoming present within one’s mind, body, and soul.
I used to be a nanny, which gave me the passion to want to work with children and teens. It was so clear to me that if I could teach mindfulness, self-love, joy, and kindness to our next generation it could help the world become a more peaceful place.
Yoga is the only practice in my opinion that builds a bridge between the mind, the body, and spirit. I graduated from Soul School, and my practice has enhanced my ability to become more mindful. It allows me to deepen my connection to myself, to heal and to be more present, patient and loving.
I am a stuntwoman, actress, and crystal reiki practitioner. This gives me the ability to teach no fear, inner and outer strength, self-expression and the art of healing, going within and meditation.
Michelle Tanner-Gruntz
In my class I carve out the time and space for Tweens to connect to their inner wisdom while navigating the changes they are undergoing mentally, physically, emotionally. Students can expect to breathe, stretch, be creative and relax in class while having fun.
Yoga is a way of life for me, a road map in how I want to live, both on and off my mat. I first began practicing while juggling life as a single mom. It felt like coming home to my body, my mind, and my soul. I became a calmer, happier person and learned to take life’s many turns in stride while also staying true to myself. I completed my kids’ yoga training in 2012 and Soul School in 2013 at Wild Lotus.
I am a creative nurturer – a mom, wife, daughter, sister, friend, teacher, and business entrepreneur. It lights me up to help others reach their dreams and potential.
Nichol Moya
When I arrived in New Orleans, my relationship crumbled, I had no friends and no money. I had nowhere to turn except to the practice. I found Wild Lotus Yoga, or maybe it found me, and it cracked me wide open: from my experience with work-study, to my time in Soul School. This practice teaches me how to have faith, to follow the wisdom of the heart, no matter where is leads me, to believe in myself and in others, to trust and to love. It has awoken this desire in me to live an intentional life that is not only lifts me up, but all those around me. I can only hope that through sharing this practice it inspires a radical opening and unfolding in you.
Nicole Rezza
In addition to managing both studio locations at Wild Lotus, I teach Prenatal, Mom & Baby and Peaceful Mamas. It’s taken me years to realize there is no such thing as the perfect parent. Mindful parenting teaches me to see things as they are and not how we wish them to be. This is what brings me to my mat and makes me a better parent to my 2 amazing children. My hope is that by talking about parenting that the journey into parenthood becomes more graceful for the women who come to my classes.
After my first class, Wild Lotus instantly became my home. I am in awe of how the universe led me to NOLA where I met my husband and have the honor of working with an amazing group of people I call my family. I attended the very first Soul School at Wild Lotus Yoga and I am a certified prenatal instructor through Mamaste™ Yoga.
Stephanie Travers
In class, expect to slow down, savor transitions, and explore the faithful nature of the breath. I believe any level of practitioner can forge a deeper relationship with their practice, finding what is personal and real each time they step on the mat.
Yoga has been a faithful guide through life’s adventures since I took my first class thirteen years ago. In 2014, I found home both in New Orleans and Wild Lotus, going on to complete the teacher training at the studio. I then joined the teaching team after finishing a 6-month mentorship program.
Like an ancient house with many rooms, yoga keeps me coming back in search of the next beautiful treasure to cherish and share. I light up when I see my students find their own natural wisdom as they move through meditation and asana.
Off the mat, I am an animal-loving writer and editor who finds great joy in a good glass of wine.
Vera Lester
I’m fascinated by the physical body — obsessed with anatomy, mechanics, therapeutics, innovative alignment, and using the body as a metaphor in class. I borrow from classical and tantric philosophy alike, and use stories to help understand the tough stuff of life. Most importantly, I think yoga should always be fun — both on and off the mat.
Yoga helped me escape the never-ending hamster wheel in my brain, and then it showed me how to be gentler with myself and dared me to expand my expectations for myself. Laughter and singing are my preferred methods of prayer. I’m a Soul School graduate and a mentor to new teachers at the studio. When I’m not teaching, I’m coaching thoughtful leaders, marrying people (to each other!), and writing about yoga and life at www.veralester.com.
Zach Jenkins
Yoga, and asana in particular, is a great way to explore the mythos of our being. I find that each movement is symbolic in some way. In my classes, I like to explore this symbology as we mindfully move through the practice. Music is also an inspiration for me, and something I include in my practice and teaching. I love diving into sound whether in a more musical sense or just the sonic bouquet of a gong.
Yoga has been an unfolding practice of fusion and synergy for me. I began practicing yoga while studying literature in college. Soon, I noticed the parallels between the existential philosophy I was reading and the yogic philosophy I was learning outside of class. After I graduated college, I knew I wanted to study yoga and meditation. I left Louisiana for the Omega Institute and it was there where my practice and study of yoga deepened. I enrolled in Soul School when I returned.