Our holistic arts school in Berkeley offers unparalleled instruction in yoga, qi gong and tai chi, with many classes designed especially for beginner students. There are also weekly touch-positive communication and relationship workshops as well as permaculture design courses.

Please note that our Yoga program has been suspended until further notice

Yoga Classes:
Weekdays: 1:00pm-2:00pm and 6:00-7:00pm
Saturday: 8:30am-9:30am
Sunday: 9:00am-10:00am

Qi Gong + Tai Chi (combined):
Tuesdays: 7:15pm-9:00pm
Sundays: 1:30pm-2:30pm

Classes are fair-trade — you pay what you feel is fair, but a $2 minimum applies. Please note that to keep your course fees as low as possible, we only accept bank cards – no cash or checks please.
We are located at 2130 Center Street on the third floor, between Shattuck and Oxford streets.

Yoga mats, blankets and other props are available free of charge.

The style of class varies with each instructor, but beginners are welcomed in all classes. Please plan on arriving about 15 minutes before your first class to get checked in.

Our Instructors:

Allison Axelrod
[Yoga: Thursday 6:00pm-7:00pm]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jin Lee
[Yoga: Monday 6:00pm-7:00pm]
Jin has practiced yoga for the past 12 years, and taught for 6 of those years. She first started taking classes to relieve herself from my stressful job, and it became one of the best decisions of her life. She studied in India for 3 months under Jayakumar at the Pranava Yoga Dhama, and then began her journey of Pranayama & Meditation, which brought a new spiritual light to her practice.

Classes are power based yoga with a flow into each posture. She also likes to integrate other styles. Some days you will get a work out and other days your muscles will be able to relax and elongate. Each class starts with breath work and ends with a small meditation and chanting.
 
 
Larry Wong
[Taiji + Qi Gong: Tuesday 7:15pm-9:00pm]
Sifu Larry “Ding Gui” Wong has been practicing since 1964. His background consists of several styles of Martial Arts & Healing Arts, Taiji & Qigong Mentoring and Psycho-Spiritual Therapy. Larry has collected experiences from all over the world, to form a teaching style that is not only effective but considerate of the level of skill of his students.

Larry teaches with compassion and encourages students to learn and grow at their own pace through a method based on nature. “I like people to grow naturally. If you want the tree to grow faster, you don’t pull so hard that it comes out of the ground!”
 
 
Leah Atwood
[Yoga: Tuesdays and Fridays 6:00-7:00pm]
Leah has been practicing yoga for over 11 years. Having come from a competitive athletic background she was drawn to yoga for its physical benefits and healing abilities, but devoted herself to its practice for the self-reflective and spiritual doors it opened.

Classes integrate fluid movement with alignment and stillness, working on communication between the body and mind using the tool of breath to access the divine, changeless, and ever-connected self. The conscious yoking of prana to mindful movement aims to cultivate an open and energetic core to support a more expansive awareness of wellbeing and abundance. Leah’s teaching style creates a safe space to explore your own path of practice and encourages a sense of humor while on the mat in order to bridge the practice beyond.

Leah’s yoga practice is innately connected to her professional focus in the non-profit sector working with the development of local and global food systems and connecting international agrarian communities guided by principles of sustainability through farmer-to-farmer exchange. She received her training through the San Francisco Yoga Tree’s Hatha Vinyasa Teacher Training (TT), Dharma Mittra’s Life of a Yogi TT, Jane Austin’s Prenatal Yoga TT, and Judith Lasater’s Relax and Renew Restorative Yoga TT. She is deeply grateful for the many teachers that have inspired her along her journey such as Dharma Mittra, Elise Lorimer, Karl Erb, Jane Austin, Janet Stone, Amanda Dates, Christopher Tompkins, Scott Blossom and Judith Lasater.
 
 
Phoenix Soleil
[Cuddle Workshops: Sunday 6:00pm-9:00pm]
Phoenix is deeply passionate about building healthy communities. Her cuddle workshops are a place where silly is valued; she strives to make each party a time where people can question, experiment and transform by creating a sacred and playful space. Bringing her training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), talents as a performer and kinesthetic wisdom as a dancer to create safe and touch-fantastic friendly options for others.

Brooklyn-born Phoenix Soleil graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Cultural Anthropology.
 
 
Rebecca White
[Yoga: Thursday 6:00pm-7:00pm]
Rebecca White has been a devoted practitioner of Hatha Yoga for the last 16 years. Raised in New York City and the Bay Area, her parents were students of Rudanada and his teachings have inspired her life and practice. Rebecca earned her Yoga Teacher certification from Yoga Mandala in Nov. 2008 under the guidance of David Moreno, in Berkeley California. Sanskrit Master Dr. Ram Karan Sharma of New Delhi, India has shared his wisdom through classes and practice with Rebecca for the last five years. She is a student of the yoga of music and studied with the late Ali Akbar Khan. She is a dedicated life long student of Yoga, Sanskrit and music.

Using her background in Hatha Yoga and intuitive knowledge of the body, Rebecca shares an integrated physical and spiritual practice. Drawing from a classical knowledge of ancient Sanskrit texts and experience with modern Vinyasa, Ashtanga and Anusara yoga forms she creates a space for a fun, challenging, and heart opening voyage into the inner depths of yoga pushing physical limits and expanding your potential in a safe environment.
 
 
Samantha Sweetwater
[Authentic Spirituality Circles: Thursday 7:30pm-10:00pm]
Samantha Sweetwater brings passion, presence and an immense breadth of experience to the journey of embodied leadership and awakening. She is a spiritual guide, life coach amnd movement expert who inspires and empowers personal and collective transformation through practice, inquiry, celebration and direct spiritual perception. She is the founder and director of Dancing Freedom, PeaceBody Japan and Soul Coaching. Her work supports optimal physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, and creates learning laboratories for leadership, resilience, courage, radical honesty and joy . As a Priestess of the Beauty Way, she serves the unfoldment of oneness for all beings. A much loved facilitator, she has shared the awakening journey through embodied arts, ceremony and one-on-one Soul Coaching sessions with thousands of people around the globe since 1995.
 
 
 
 
Tara Sullivan
[Yoga: Wednesday 6pm-7pm and Saturday 8:30am-9:30am]
Tara has relocated to the Bay Area after 3 years in New Zealand and 16 years in New York City. In New York she regularly attended fantastic Yoga classes taught by extraordinary teachers; when she moved to Auckland, New Zealand, she discovered that the teachings she sought had not yet made it quite that far. Her desire to further her practice led Tara to Sydney, Australia, where she completed the teacher training at Samadhi Bliss Yoga and went on to teach at The Yoga Ground in Auckland. Since then she has spent two summers in Woodstock, New York, studying with Sharon Gannon and David Life at their Wild Woodstock Intensive and also completed the month-long, residential Jivamukti Yoga teacher training at the Omega Institute.

Tara has a life-long love of music and sound and incorporates Sanskrit chanting and eclectic music into her asana classes. A former opera singer and Music faculty member at Long Island University, Tara has been a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique for over a decade; the study of breathing, inherent to both disciplines, continues to deepen and clarify through her study of Yoga. She enjoys a rigorous, flowing asana practice and knows from experience that steady, disciplined practice can create profound transformation and a complete paradigm shift.
 
 
Tony Eason
[Yoga: Thursday 2:30pm-4:00pm]
Born in San Francisco, Iyengar Yoga Teacher, Tony Eason has been a student of Yoga for over 17 years.. As a road cyclist, Tony came to yoga for the benefits of stretching. He is a graduate of the Two-year Advanced Teacher Training Program of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco. His classes are based on the traditions of B.K.S. Iyengar.

Through Hatha yoga classes, he teaches students to pay attention to the alignment of their bodies, to become aware of the breath, and to control the mind. Presently, Tony teaches classes, seminars, and substitute teaches at: James Howell Studio, Club One, the San Francisco Tennis Club, Common Circle Education, and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.
 
 
Tiffany Foo
[Qi Gong: Wednesday 10am-11am and Sunday 1:30pm-2:30pm]
Tiffany Foo is a conscious journeying, warrior poet-ing, kung fu-loving integral inquirer committed to working towards her own and other’s personal embodied unfolding.

Having a long-term fascination with healing the body through working with energy she is intrigued by the possibilities of expanded intra and inter-energetic awareness in oneself and within the greater world of which one is a part. She is a Certified Massage Therapist and Qi Gong practitioner.

Presently, she parcels her energies towards her Masters in Integral Psychology.
 
 
Vanessa Greenfield
[Yoga: Monday 1pm-2pm and Thursday 1pm-2pm]
Vanessa has been teaching yoga passionately since 2004. Trained in several styles of yoga, including Sivananda, vinyasa, and hatha flow, Vanessa blends her intuitive and playful sense of movement with a sense of humility and honoring the traditional practice.

Through facilitating a practice of consciously connecting breath and movement, Vanessa invites you to shed the layers of constriction and awaken to your true self. She is also currently a student of Ayurveda, yoga’s sister science.