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 third 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. 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. Diana began taking classes at AHA in 2003 and remains grateful to all of her excellent AHA teachers especially Jill, Carole, Chas, and Laura. She studies weekly with Janice Vien and is participating in Janice’s two-year teacher training program. She has also studied with Peentz Dubble 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 mind and body.

Email Laurie.

Hanna Cerwall

Hanna Cerwall’s roots lie in dance, especially modern dance is close to hear heart. She always found that the transition from dance to yoga was a very natural one, and yoga is now her main passion. Her teaching style is inspired by the Ashtanga tradition, but she incorporates ideas and poses that speak to her heart in her classes. Hanna studied dance full time for a year at the Krisitnehamns Folkhoegskola in Sweden, her native country. In addition to the many dance courses she also studied anatomy and massage.

After the birth of her first child, Hanna attended a Mommy and Me yoga class and felt that it was such a wonderful experience and that she wanted to pass this on to more new mothers in a wider area. She has been teaching this class at AHA since September 2006. Before that she taught yoga to teachers in Enfield for several years. Hanna is striving for a yoga teacher certificate to advance her knowledge of the nexus between the body and the soul.

Email Hanna.

Barbara Rooney

Barbara was co-director of the first AHA Yoga Studio with Jill in Lyme, N.H. She is now director of AHA West in Inyokern, CA (see her website below). Barbara is devoted to working with persons facing significant somatic and psychological challenges. Her clients and students include the elderly, those with cardiovascular disease, cancer, AIDS, as well as those facing end-of-life, and their families, support circles and caregivers. She offers a safe and contemplative approach to those looking for ways to center and strengthen themselves in these times of great stress.

Barbara has her BA in Psychology and is studying for her master’s degree in Gerontology. Her professional education includes nurses’ aide training, support group facilitation training, hospice volunteer work, and seminars and intensives taught by authorities in end-of-life care and anatomy and physiology. Her contemplative practice draws from a variety of yoga techniques as well as eastern philosophy, and metaphysics. She is registered with the Yoga Alliance, and has her certification in Yoga of the Heart™ as created and taught by Nischala Devi. She is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.

Email Barbara Rooney or visit her web site.