Conference Teachers

Create Empower Unite Liberate Transform Love

Welcome | Schedule | Teachers | Travel | Yoga for Unity 2009

Adi Carter

Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa

Penni Feiner

Geri Topfer

Andrea Sacchetti

Elizabeth Piccard

Nancy Candea

Christian Valeriani

BIOS

Adi Carter

Adi draws from her background as a teacher of yoga and Pilates as well as her training in herbalism to create unique and challenging classes that re-align the body and mind. Adi created the Detox series sequences to help purify the digestive track as well as replenish the areas of the body that regularly filter out toxins from the environment. This practice helps to bring awareness to toxicity that exists in the foods we eat, the products we use, the air we breathe and the emotions we generate inside ourselves. Recently featured in Yoga Journal, National Geographic and Yoga+ Joyful Living for her fundraising initiatives with The Mindfulness Challenge, Adi is known for tying in her passion for environmental awareness and activism into vibrant classes filled with spirit and devotion. She is currently traveling the world teaching workshops and donation based yoga classes.

For more information, please visit:

www.adicarter.com

S. S. Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa, D.C.

Mahan Rishi Singh co-founded the Khalsa Healing Arts and Yoga Center in Yardley, PA. USA in 1989. He began studying yoga and meditation in 1973-4 and entered the Guru Ram Das Ashram in 1975 as a student and teacher of Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Having taught nationally and internationally, along with traveling numerous times to India, he seeks to bring the ancient wisdom and authentic devotional practices of yoga and meditation into everyday life. He has been leading retreats and yatras (spiritual pilgrimages) to India, Nepal and Tibet over the past 25 years. His experiences of the kundalini and subtle-energy currents of the etheric body have led him to guide his students toward Self-realization and illumination through Universal love and understanding. His vision is for each student to have an experience of vital energy, great joy, and liberating peace. Sessions with Mahan Rishi are gentle yet powerful, energizing and calming, creating a deep sense of peace and vitality.

Nancy Candea, CYT, E-RYT, CPT

Nancy is the founder and director of Yoga Impact for Under Served Populations. She has been directing Yoga Alliance Registered Teacher trainings since 2008. Her own yoga practice has sustained her since 1986 and she has been teaching yoga since 1997. Nancy teaches yoga classes and workshops, and gives private yoga therapy instruction. She has studied under senior level teachers in Iyengar, Ashtanga, Anusara and Structural Integration styles of yoga. When she isn’t teaching yoga, Nancy spends time with her husband, two adults daughters and ballroom dancing. Learn more at yogaimpact.org or nancycandea.com.

Teo Drake

Teo Drake is a yoga & martial arts teacher, educator and activist. As an Queer identified Trans Man living with AIDS, he has 101 reasons to not want to be present in his own skin. The physical and spiritual practice of yoga and meditation made it possible to begin to heal and feel at home in his own body. As a yoga teacher, he works mainly with adults and children who do not have access to mainstream yoga venues for a variety of reasons. As an activist and educator, he works with institutions to increase queer and transgender individuals access to care.

Penni Feiner ERYT

Penni Feiner has seven years of experience teaching vinyasa flow yoga and is a Kundalini Research Institute-certified yoga teacher. Also certified to teach restorative and LifeForce Yoga®, her classes integrate sacred sound with movement, encouraging participants to explore their own inner song. Penni is executive director of Kula for Karma, a community of yoga teachers who offer yoga to people challenged by illness, abuse, neglect, addiction, and other life obstacles, and also cofounded Emotion in Motion, a workshop for transforming trauma in the body. www.kulaforkarma.org

Geri Topfer ERYT

Geri Topfer has been dedicated to the path of yoga for 10 years. She blends the teachings of Kundalini Yoga, LifeForce Yoga®, and the alignment principles of Anusara Yoga®, bringing to each heart the nourishment it needs to live more courageously and powerfully. She is the founder and President of Kula for Karma—a community of yoga teachers who offer yoga to those who have been challenged by illness, abuse, neglect, addiction, and other life obstacles. In 2010, Geri launched teenkula, creating a dynamic community of philanthropic teens, and she is cofounder of Emotion in Motion, a workshop for transforming trauma in the body. www.kulaforkarma.org

Andrea Sacchetti RYT200

Andrea is Co-Founder and Director of the new organization, Yoga Calling, which brings yoga to under-served populations. As part of this work, she delights in teaching yoga weekly to incarcerated youth in New Jersey. Andrea Sacchetti is a yoga teacher and yoga therapist specializing in techniques for stress reduction and well-being. She is the originator and lead teacher of the 10 week Yoga Makeover program at the Princeton Center for Yoga and Health, where she has been teaching regular weekly classes since May 2005. Additional offerings include Healing Yoga and Meditation in two Cancer Wellness programs, Yoga for Allergy and Asthma, and Radical Healing. As an adjunct faculty member, Andrea taught Yoga for Special Needs in the Spanda Yoga Teacher Training Program, a Yoga Alliance registered school. She is a graduate of this program at the 200 hour level, and studied under the direct supervision of founder Dr. Jaime Stover Schmitt. Andrea is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.

Elizabeth Piccard RYT200

Elizabeth is Co-Founder and Associate Director of the newly formed organization, Yoga Calling, which brings yoga to under-served populations. She is grateful to have the opportunity to teach yoga each week to incarcerated youth in New Jersey. Elizabeth Piccard is a former Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor and became a yoga teacher in order to take yoga into correctional facilities. She is a graduate of the Simply Yoga Teacher Training Program at the 200 hour level. She has an eighteen year old son who has inspired in her greater patience, flexibility and an understanding of the importance of accepting teenagers for where they are emotionally and physically on any given day.

Christian Valeriani RYT

Christian Valeriani is the Director/Owner of EvenFlow Yoga and is a Certified Yoga Instructor, Registered Yoga Teacher, Certified YogaEd teacher and Certified Vinyasa Instructor. Following many successful years working with two of Wall Street's high-profile investment firms, Christian changed focus towards the discipline of Yoga and its many benefits. Christian's yoga-based spiritual foundation drives his need to provide all, without discrimination, with an equal opportunity to integrate Yoga in their lives, regardless of the individual's goals, expectations and philosophies. Christian has expanded his sphere of influence into the boardroom through his consulting firm, Sama Business Solutions. Sama offers the highest level of Stress Management and Leadership Development for C-level executives and corporate teams (www.samasolutions.com). Christian also has provided yoga therapy for families at Integrated Care Concepts, developed a program focused on children with special needs for the Monmouth County Park System and collaborates with schools systems to help improve awareness, behavior and concentration to students and teachers alike.

Antoinette Simms

Antoinette Simms has been teaching yoga/fitness/dance for over 15 years. A former competitive body builder, boxer and fitness instructor/personal trainer. She has also taught and practiced a variety of styles of yoga such as: Kundalini, Ashtanga, somatics,

vinyasa, Gentle Restorative, Yoga Nidra and Svaroopa. She was involved with teaching and performing hip hop dance for several years and now Journey Dance has taken over her passions. Some of the locations she has taught Journey Dance for are Omega in Rhine beck New York, The Comfort Zone in Lewes, Delaware and Amrit Yogi Desai's ashram in Salt Springs, Florida. She is currently teaching restorative/gentle yoga and Journey Dance at Frog Lotus center in North Adams, Mass. She is a former staff member at Kripalu Center for over 3 years. Working on the yoga team, Retreat and Renewal as well as a service consultant.

Antoinette is known for her compassionate presence with her students and her love of service to humanity.

Jim Davidson

Jim Davidson is a world percussionist and plays drums of many cultures, usually African style dununba (jun-jun), the big barrel bass drums in a djembe ensemble. He is a student of West African and Middle Eastern percussion and has studied with many masters including Mamady Keita, Famoudou Konate, Menes Yahuda, Quint Lange and Glen Velez. As a member of the African drum ensemble PaTaGun.com since 1998, Jim has performed in many venues. With the improv band Tribal Rising (jembe.com), he uses the big dununba to lay down powerful African rhythms that give the voice, flute and other instruments a place to fly over. He also teaches beginning African djembe to private students in Lambertville. Jim builds many of the drums he plays in public and has a large collection of world percussion instruments. With a background in physics, Jim works on understanding the acoustics of his instruments and the music theory of the polyrhythms he loves to play. But his real joy is playing with other drummers, the entrainment of the group and the feeling of the rhythmic music that creates, especially when they have dancers.