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Cristin Tighe (Simran Kaur), RYT, is the former owner of Spiral Flight Yoga. She is certified to teach Kundalini Yoga through the Kundalini Research Institute’s International Teacher Training program, and she has advanced training in Conscious Pregnancy and Relax & Renew Restorative Yoga. She is one of the nine Radiant Child Yoga Program Facilitators with extensive expertise in childrens yoga. She is a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher and a member of the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association. She offers Radiant Child Yoga Program and Yoga4Teens trainings, as well as pregnancy and Kundalini Yoga workshops.
Brad Crews spent most his life studying the body-mind connection, including yoga, dance, martial arts, athletics, shiatsu, chinese medicine, and skydiving. After training with the world famous Moscow Art Theatre, the first decade of his career explored  fascination with psychological gesture and creative centering as an actor, singer and dancer. Later, he became a full-time yoga teacher/student and quickly gained a reputation as a ‘teacher’s’ teacher. Many professional yoga instructors take his classes and work with him privately. From 2000, he spent four years wandering as an itinerant yogi and Zen Buddhist, traveling the U.S. and Europe as well as studying in India and living for three years in Zen Buddhist temples. In 2004, he  forsook his wandering ways and moved to Moscow, Russia. He continues to teach yoga internationally, with a special interest in combining yoga with  performance arts. He is an award-winning English teacher and does voiceover work for documentary films and sings in nightclubs around the city. He is also a licensed skydiver and an avid tango dancer.  When in DC, he offers interesting topical yoga workshops.
Eliana Baccas, director of Suparna, Partners in Transformation of Madison, is a 500 hour Registered Yoga Alliance teacher.  Founder and former director of SpiralFlight Yoga Center of Washington, DC, she has taught many thousands of classes and workshops since starting her teaching practice in 1977.  She is a graduate of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, with a specialty in "Working with Physical Process".  Her teaching focuses on awakening the intelligence of the INNER BODY and offers students a deeper, more primal level of body/mind awareness.  Her work is most inspired by her teachers, Victor van Kooten and Angela Farmer who specialize in inner movement from the body's core, and by gifted Shamanic healer Luisa Kolker of Santa Fe.
Christy Brock completed the Advanced Studies Program at Rodney Yee's Piedmont Yoga Studio in CA, and studied at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Institute in India. She has extensive experience teaching yoga to teens in studios, schools and summer camps. Christy is a champion for the movement of Yoga for Teenagers: see www.yogaminded.com. She co-authored a book How to Teach Yoga to Teens and released a DVD Yoga4Teens. She comes to Spiral Flight to offer her Yoga4Teens teacher training.
Darshan Kaur Khalsa is the lead trainer for this program. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga, as taught by Yogi Bhajan, in the greater DC area for over 30 years. She is a primary Teacher Trainer in the mid-Atlantic States'  KRI Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training certification program, and this is the eleventh year she is offering this training in this area. She was personally asked by Yogi Bhajan to create the training program for this area, and he said of Darshan Kaur, "She came here as a teacher-- to elevate people. She has a powerful prayer to bring out the God in everyone." The International Kundalini Yoga Teachers' Association recognized her with an award for her work in building yoga communities. She is Kundalini Research Institute certified as a Level 1 & Level 2 Trainer, is registered with the Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level, and has taught over 13,000 hours of yoga classes since 1973. She is also on the faculty of Northern VA Community College teaching Yoga and Meditation. Her website is www.kundalini-yoga.us. She teaches Kundalini Yoga workshops and Teacher Trainings.
Darshan Kaur Khalsa  Yes, there are two people in this area with the same name! Teaching Kundalini Yoga and Meditation is one of Darshan’s favorite things to do, and she also takes great satisfaction from being a personal life coach. In her words - both Kundalini Yoga and Life Coaching help us to experience what Yogi Bhajan often reminded us:  the satisfaction and fulfillment we seek in our lives is within us, not outside of us. Darshan studied with Yogi Bhajan, the Master of Kundalini Yoga, for over 30 years, and is a certified yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance. She is also a trainer in the local Yoga Teacher Training Program. In addition, she is a graduate of Coach U, one of the leading coach training programs, as well as a member of ICF, the coaching professional organization. She offers Kundalini Yoga and coaching workshops and Teacher Training.
Gurudass Kaur has taught Kundalini Yoga since 1972. Along with her husband, she opened the first Kundalini Yoga School in Barcelona, Spain in 1978, and has been an active teacher trainer in Spain and Europe. Her big heart and gift with people have placed her on the forefront of many 3HO events, both in Europe and the USA. She is the program director for both the 3HO Yoga Festival in France and the 3HO Summer Solstice gathering in New Mexico. She is the creator of CHILDPLAY, an innovative yoga based, fun and creative activities program for children, which she teaches worldwide. She is also a very gifted singer and musician. Her beautiful and powerful voice has the gift to uplift and expand the mind into a pure state of bliss and is a well-known Kundalini Yoga musician. She teaches Kundalini Yoga training and ChildPlay Yoga.	photo coming!
Erin Maile O’Keefe (co-founder CircusYoga, Flying Partner Yoga, CircusYoga Teacher Training) is a certified Kripalu Yoga, Rasa Yoga, and Embodied Anatomy & Yoga teacher whose practice is informed by Body-Mind Centering, circus, and dance. Her studies take her to India to study Viniyoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram with T.K.V. Desikachar, to Colorado to study meditation with Reggie Ray, and to Amherst to study Anatomy and Development Movement with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Her teachers also include Nateshvar Ken Scott, Erich Schiffmann, and Beth Biegler. She has taught movement studies to kids and adults since 1981. Through the "Growing A Story" program, she taught story creation, creative movement, and play production to inner-city elementary students. She is the former Festival Director and VP of the American Youth Circus Organization. Born and raised in Hawai'i, Erin regularly teaches yoga classes, workshops, and retreats there and in NY and VT. Together, with Kevin O'Keefe, they led Flying Partner Yoga workshops for nine years and continue to study Yoga, circus arts, Thai massage, and meditation. Their teaching style is playful and dynamic. Over the past 8 years they taught at Kripalu Center for Yoga and around the world. Together they continue to discover CircusYoga by exploring deep questions in themselves and in their CircusYoga community. They offer Circus Yoga workshops here.	photo coming!
Guru Ganesha Singh Khalsa started out in a musical family. Born in Boston, MA to a Russian Jewish father who worked as a professional comedian/singer and an Irish Catholic mother who was a professional dancer, his early years were filled with song and dance. When the rock and roll explosion hit the US in the 1960s, he  bought an electric guitar and joined in with boundless enthusiasm. When he started exploring his spirituality through Sikhism, Guru Ganesha brought his love of Western music to the traditions of his new Eastern lifestyle. Through the years, he has spread his personal brand of musical inspiration to people all over the world. He offers his live music and chanting at times.	photo coming!
Guru Prem Singh Khalsa has been teaching Kundalini Yoga for more than twenty-five years and is certified by KRI as a trainer of Teachers of Kunadalini Yoga. He was also given the title 'Posture Master' by Yogi Bhajan. He is the author of the book, Yogi Bhajan asked him to write "Kundalini Yoga: the correct way", titled 'Divine Alignment'. He has always studied the use of the body, at an early age he enrolled himself in Gymnastics classes. Thru Gymnastics he got a scholarship to USC and went on to compete at the Elite level. After college he taught gymnastics and began to study Martial Arts and Yoga. He also has an active Massage Therapy practice in the Khalsa Medical Clinic in Beverly Hills. He teaches Divine Alignment.	photo coming!
Jeanne Feeney, a movement therapist and dancer, has been a Certified practitioner of Body-Mind Centering since 1989. Drawn to BMC after it healed her injured wrists, she uses it in varied settings and finds it remarkably versatile and life changing. She founded Movement Laboratory in 1990 to teach child and adult classes, workshops and private sessions to promote health and healing through movement and touch. Jeanne has brought Movement Laboratory to corporate settings and to new mothers in challenged conditions and has clients in the DC, MD and VA as well as New York City, several European countries and Japan. CNN interviewed her and featured her prenatal movement class to an international audience in a piece about pre and peri-natal psychology and health. Jeanne maintains a private practice in Takoma Park, MD and offers movement embodiment and fitness, prenatal, and infant developmental movement classes. Come with your baby to her Tummy Time Yoga!
Karen Soltes is the Director of the Therapeutic Yoga program at Circle Yoga/Budding Yogis and a graduate of the teacher training at Willow Street Yoga Center. She holds masters degrees in both Clinical Social Work and Education and has worked in a variety of therapeutic and educational settings over the past 30 years.  In addition to her work at Circle Yoga where she teaches both traditional and therapeutic yoga, as well as Yoga Nidra, she is developing and teaching  a yoga nidra program for veterans at the Washington DC VA.  Her overall intention is to weave together her years of clinical experience with the practice of yoga and mediation to empower and support people to live life in a more balanced way. She offers a Relaxation Series on Yoga Nidra.
Kartar Singh Khalsa has been teaching yoga and meditation courses in Kundalini Yoga for 30 years. He's been fascinated with the science of communication and group dynamics most of his life. He took training in the art of facilitation and deep listening with the Institute for the Advancement of Service. He is an International Kundalini Yoga Teacher Association certified Kundalini Yoga teacher and trainer, Director of Solstice Children’s Camp, the Institute for the Advancement of Service Communications Facilitator and parent. He offer special Kundalini Yoga workshops, like Numerology or Heart & Soul work for Children, with his wife Shakta Kaur Khalsa.
Kathleen Furin is the co-founder and co-director of the Maternal Wellness Center. She holds an MSW from Temple University and is a Birth Works certified childbirth educator and Birth Works certified trainer. She has extensive experience working with HIV+ pregnant women and with teen parents. She is a regular contributor to The Mother magazine. Her work has also been published in Literary Mama, The Mother’s Movement Online, Mamazine, Philadelphia Stories, Midwifery Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other journals. Her essay, “Album,” is featured in Operation Homecoming, an anthology of writings about the war in Iraq. Furin is the recipient of the 2007 Birth Works Childbirth Educator of the Year award. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two daughters. She offers the Birthworks International Childbirth Educator training here.
Kevin O'Keefe (co-founder CircusYoga, Flying Partner Yoga, CircusYoga Teacher Training, founder Circus Minimus and American Youth Circus Organization) has been a certified advanced Integral Hatha yoga teacher for the past sixteen years. At the Big Apple Circus School, he was a director of inner-city teens for five years. Kevin taught around the globe for twenty years. Circus Minimus educates youth in and through circus arts, running in-school residencies, integrated circus curriculums, and afterschool programs in NYC and New England. In 1998, he was founding president of the American Youth Circus Organization. He has toured internationally with his One-Man Circus in-a-Suitcase show and taught for many years in Sarah Lawrence College theatre program. Together, with Erin Maile O'Keefe, they led Flying Partner Yoga workshops for nine years and continue to study Yoga, circus arts, Thai massage, and meditation. Their teaching style is playful and dynamic. Over the past 8 years they taught at Kripalu Center for Yoga and around the world. Together they continue to discover CircusYoga by exploring deep questions in themselves and in their CircusYoga community. They offer Circus Yoga workshops here.	photo coming soon!
Krishna Kaur, born and raised in Los Angeles, has taught Kundalini Yoga since 1970. Prior to that, she had a very successful career in the theater on Broadway. She is certified by 3HO Foundation and the Kundalini Research Institute as a Kundalini Yoga Teacher and Trainer. She opened The Kundalini Yoga Center on 53rd Street and Broadway in Los Angeles in 1971. For the past eleven years, she's taught yoga to urban and incarcerated youth. She founded Y.O.G.A. for Youth and trains yoga teachers how to effectively expose “urban” teens to the ancient art and science of yoga. She is President and founding member of the International Association of Black Yoga Teachers, supporting black yoga teachers and make yoga available to inner-city  communities through out the Diaspora. She trains students in Ghana. She offers Y.O.G.A. for Youth Training and workshops at Spiral Flight.
Mark Wolynn, Director of the Bert Hellinger Institute of Western PA, conducts Family Constellation Workshops and Trainings in the USA, England, Canada, Latin America, and for the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Social Work's Continuing Education Program. He is also a Board-Certified Regression Therapist, a Medical Hypnotherapist and a Family Systems Therapist who trains and supervises psychotherapists throughout the United States. Mark specializes in working with depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, fears, self-injury, chronic pain and other medical conditions unresponsive to conventional treatment.  He offers the powerful Family Constellation workshops.
Matt Hayat, Ph.D., MMQ, has been studying the Eastern arts for 18 years. He began his studies in the martial arts and was first exposed to traditional Chinese medicine in this context. After training for years in the combative arts, and learning how to use the energetic system of the body for self-defense, he one day spontaneously fell ill and was later diagnosed with a serious illness. Matt is a Western biomedical scientist by training and currently works on studies of astronaut health at Johnson Space Center in TX. After extensively researching Western treatment options for his illness, he quickly discovered there was little hope for treating, much less curing, his medical condition. Since that time he has been on a journey to learn as much as possible about the Eastern healing arts. He has studied and trained intensively for several years in qigong for self-healing and has discovered firsthand the benefits of this powerful modality. Matt holds a Master in Medical Qigong Therapy through the International Institute of Medical Qigong (IIMQ). The IIMQ uses the same curriculum and standards as used by the Hai Dian University Medical Qigong College in Beijing, China. Matt looks forward to sharing with you what he has learned in working towards better balance and health.  He offers workshops when in DC.
Robin Appel (Arula), RYT-500, received her 500 hour certification with Yoga Alliance. She’s a Yoga Ed.™ Trainer, Sport Yoga™ Instructor, AMFT Pilates Instructor/Personal Trainer, ISSA Youth Fitness Trainer, Usui Reiki Master/Teacher and Chakra Healer. She took her first yoga class at age eight while she was training to become a professional dancer. She performed for many years with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet Company, but her career ended early because of a hip injury. To recover yoga and Pilates became a vigorous part of her daily physical therapy. She began teaching yoga and Pilates in 1999, passing on the knowledge she had learned. Robin is dedicated to empowering her students to be able to make healthy decisions by becoming yoga-educated. She offer Yoga Ed. trainings at Spiral Flight, usually twice a year.
Sabrina Huffman, RYT - “Observe the way the heart draws you, and choose that way with all your strength.” (Hasidic saying)  And this is precisely what Sabrina did in 2006 when she left a 20-year career at the World Bank to pursue her passions for wellness and self-discovery through teaching yoga. Her real yoga practice and journey took root in 2000, after the birth of her daughter, and she’s not looked back. Since, she studied with various teachers primarily from the ashtanga, vinyasa/flow or “power” yoga systems. While her own style is always evolving, her teaching emphasizes curiosity, dancing with the edge, and embracing awareness, acceptance, and playfulness both on and off the mat. She credits her two children for inspiring her to listen to the teacher within, and to embrace challenges with an open heart and a good dose of humor. When not on the mat, she enjoys reading, cooking, knitting and sharing time with friends and family.  She offers special Yoga 101 workshop on vinyasa yoga.
Shakta Kaur Khalsa has been a yoga teacher for more than 30 years. She is an IKYTA certified Kundalini Yoga instructor and teacher trainer, an AMS certified Montessori educator, and a RYT-500 member of Yoga Alliance. She is an internationally recognized teacher of yoga for both adults and children, and created Radiant Child Yoga Program teacher training. She has authored several books including the Keep it Simple Series Guide to Yoga and Yoga for Women. See her website: www.shaktakhalsa.com. She teaches RCYP training and other Kundalini Yoga workshops.
Sheila Watkins is a perinatal fitness expert with over a decade of experience, training 1800 plus pregnant and new mothers as well as educating hundreds of fitness instructors, personal trainers, health professionals, and childbirth educators. Her experience includes: * Master of Life Sciences degree in Human Physiology and Nutrition * Created Healthy Moms® Fitness Programs in 1989 * International presenter for perinatal fitness since 1991 * Five nationally recognized pregnancy and postpartum fitness certifications * Former instructor in the Division of Nursing at Winston-Salem State University * Former instructor in the Department of Foods and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro * ACE “Gold” certified Fitness Instructor and “Gold” certified Personal Trainer * AFAA Certified Personal Trainer * AEA (Aquatic Exercise Association) certified aquatic fitness instructor * Creator and author of the “Resist-a-ball® Prenatal Specialty Training Course* Resist-a-Ball? C.O.R.E. Master Trainer * Published in ICEA’s “International Journal of Childbirth Education,”  “ePregnancy,” “Running and FitNews” and Melpomene Institute’s “Pregnancy and Exercise” educational materials.  She offers perinatal teacher training called Healthy Moms.
Sonia Sumar started teaching yoga for children with special needs after the birth of her second daughter Roberta, in 1970. Roberta was born with Down Syndrome, a Genetic disorder characterized by mental retardation and other developmental delays. The changes Sonia saw in Roberta lead her to attend a Yoga Teacher Training program in 1972. With inspiration from Sri Swami Sivananda, and his disciple Swami Nadabramananda, she built her own yoga practice, and eventually, in 1980, opened her own Yoga Center in Brazil called "Nucleo Cultural Sivananda;" it is now called the Integral Yoga Center of Belo Horizonte, and is headed by her daughter Renata. Yoga for the Special Child had spread so much that Sonia was receiving many invitations to give conferences at Yoga Congress as well as workshops in Brazil and other parts of South America and Europe. Sonia's life dream is to help the world's special children to achieve their full potential and become active and productive members of society. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Education and taught elementary school. She has conducted workshops and addressed special education programs and symposia. In 2001, Sonia opened the National Headquarters for Yoga for the Special Child, Satchidananda Yoga Center in IL. She continues to teach children and adults and offers specialized training courses to yoga teachers and other professionals who wish to learn her methods. She offers  Yoga for the Special Child training.
Sunder Singh Khalsa is a KRI-certified Kundalini Yoga Level 1 & 2 Teacher Trainer. He resides in VA, but teaches Kundalini Yoga in various places, particularly Asia. He is the Kundalini Research Instittue Coordinator for Teacher Training Asia, and a Member of the Khalsa Council. He is co-teaching Kundalini Yoga - Level 2: Transformation training at Spiral Flight.	photo coming soon!