Ancient Healing Arts Teachers

Jill Johnson

Jill is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher and is registered with the National Yoga Teaching Alliance. She has been practicing yoga in the Iyengar tradition since the late 1980s and has studied with Ramanand Patel, Jyoti Hansa, Janice Vien, Peentz Dubble and Patricia Walden. Jill has completed three teacher training programs, the most recent being a 250-hour program with Peentz and Patricia. She just returned from her fourth trip to India where she studied with the Iyengar family.

Jill has been a physical therapist since 1984 with a specialty in geriatrics and womens’ health. She enjoys combining her physical therapy knowledge with her love of yoga in teaching classes and privates.

Email Jill Johnson.

Charles Meyers

Charles, a licensed acupuncturist, has been practicing T’ai Chi and Qigong since 1974. He is a Level 3 certified instructor for the T’ai Chi Fundamentals. Charles uses a medical approach, not a martial arts approach, to teaching. He started practicing Zen meditation in 1977 and was ordained as a lay monk in April 2004.

Email Charles Meyers. For more detailed information, visit Charles Meyers’ web site.

Diana Shannon

Diana is director of AHA’s curriculum and outreach programs in addition to teaching. For 20+ years, she has designed innovative educational tools and curriculum for a variety of audiences, including yoga students. Diana is the webmaster for AHA’s web site and also provides design, programming, and photography for its diverse educational and marketing needs. In addition to teaching, she is coordinating AHA’s effort to bring yoga classes and workshops into the workplace, schools, and the community. In September 2009 she successfully completed the “teacher in training” assessment in the Iyengar tradition. She studies weekly with Janice Vien with whom she completed her two-year teacher training program. She also studies regularly with Peentz Dubble, Ramanand Patel, and Jyoti Hansa.

Email Diana Shannon.

Carole Petrillo

Carole began teaching yoga in 1994 after studying yoga since 1990. Carole has completed two teacher training programs, one with Jyoti Hansa and most recently a 250-hour program with Peentz Dubble and Patricia Walden. Currently Carole attends weekly classes with Janice Vien. She has had the great opportunity to study with Peentz Dubble, Ramanand Patel, Patricia Walden, and Joan White.

Carole is a registered yoga teacher with the National Yoga Teacher Alliance. She is grateful in every sense for the teachings from BKS Iyengar, and it is her pleasure to bring that passion to her students through asanas, chanting, and philosophical readings. Carole feels inspired and honored to be part of the “Yoga Tree” that passes on BKS Iyengar’s teachings.

Email Carole Petrillo.

Phyllis Deutsch

Phyllis Deutsch has been practicing yoga since 1987. She began an Iyengar practice in earnest in 1992, attending classes twice a week in Joan White’s Philadelphia studio. She moved to the Upper Valley in 1996, where she has studied with Jyoti Hansa and Janice Vien. She taught Iyengar yoga in the FLIP program at Dartmouth College from 2000 – 2005 and has been teaching classes at AHA since 2005.

Phyllis has completed teacher training workshops with Rodney Yee and Bobbi Goldin, and has studied with Peentz Dubble and Ramanand Patel. In June 2007, she completed a two-year teaching training course in Boston led by Patricia Walden and Peentz Dubble.

Email Phyllis Deutsch.

Michel George

Michele George, M.Ed., has been a certified hatha yoga teacher since 1998 and is presently working toward her Anusara Yoga certification. Her extensive Anusara training includes over 700 hours of instruction in this tradition. With John Friend, Michele has completed a Level I and Level II Teacher Training, a Therapy Teacher Training, a Master Immersion, and many workshops. In addition, she both completed and assisted a 250 hour teacher training with Deb Neubauer, a Senior Anusara teacher. Michele continues to enhance her yoga studies whenever possible through workshops and trainings with John Friend and other senior Anusara teachers.

Consistent with the Anusara tradition, Michele weaves into each class her knowledge of yogic philosophy and a creative, challenging posture flow that will inspire your body, mind and heart.

Email Michel George.

Laura Brennan

Laura is a registered yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance. Additionally, Laura has been in the health care profession for over 14 years as an RN, ARNP, and a certified oriental massage therapist. Laura started taking yoga classes in 1996 in New York City. After experiencing various styles, she found Alan Finger, founder of ISHTA Yoga and Be Yoga Studios in New York City. It is Alan’s teachings of simplicity, joy, compassion, and humor that have inspired Laura to teach yoga.

Following the ISHTA tradition, Laura enjoys teaching a variety of classes to all levels of students where students can personalize their own practice to meet their own needs. Classes are taught in a fun, loving, nurturing environment.

Email Laura Brennan.

Laurie Greenberg

Laurie Greenberg, MSN, ANP, completed her 300 hour Anusara Yoga Teacher Training with Todd Norian (Certified Anusara Instructor) this past September of 2007. Laurie is recognized by the National Yoga Alliance as an Anusara-Inspired yoga teacher certified in Hatha Yoga. Laurie has been practicing yoga for the past 13 years. Her yoga path has led her from Ashtanga Yoga (where she received a Teacher Training certificate under David Swenson) to Anusara Yoga, which she has studied and practiced for the past three years. Laurie has also studied Anusara Yoga under other nationally recognized certified Anusara teachers including John Friend (founder of Anusara Yoga), Sianna Sherman, Deb Neubauer, Desiree Rambaugh, Elena Brower and others. Laurie continues her Anusara training through frequent workshops and is working toward application to John Friend’s certification program to become fully certified in the Anusara Yoga tradition.

Laurie has been a registered nurse for the past 26 years and a Family Nurse Practitioner since 2001. Laurie combines her knowledge of the body and mind from her years of nursing with her teaching of yoga. She feels that this practice is a profound healing for the body, mind, and heart.

Email Laurie.

Jennifer Sargent has been dancing for forty years, since age two. She grew up in New York City, and studied and performed many techniques with dance professionals such as Alvin Ailey, Dudley Williams, JoJo Smith, Luigi and Christine Neubert. Jenn has been a member of two dance companies in New York and two dance companies in Atlanta.

Several years ago, in an effort to find peace and balance to counter her academic and performance pursuits, Jenn discovered Nia. She was attracted to the fact that Nia was beneficial for people of all movement levels and abilities, and was taught in therapeutic settings as well as in health clubs, dance studios and yoga studios. Jenn got her Nia Instructor White Belt certification and license in September, 2008.

Jenn is a lawyer, district court judge, and professor at Dartmouth College in the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Jenn dances every day, even if it is only in her living room. Jenn’s movement philosophy is that every body wants to move and every body can move, as long as we give the body permission to find its movement way.

Email Jennifer.

Deb Robinson

Deb began practicing Iyengar yoga in 1982 in Ann Arbor at the Y and with Barb Linderman. She returned to the Upper Valley in 1991, and subsequently has studied with Steve Jacobsen, Kathy Jastremski, Jill Johnson, and Carole Petrillo. During a mid-90s interlude in Montreal, she practiced in the Integral Yoga tradition. She has had a daily Vipassana meditation practice since 1992.

Becoming a mother of twins in 2008 and taking part in Mommy & Me Yoga has strengthened Deb’s daily yoga practice. She is excited to share her perspective of integrating yoga practice into everyday life and to give babies and toddlers as well as mothers an introduction to yoga. For mums like herself, she brings an appreciation of how yoga can protect and energize the body while opening the heart.

Email Deb.