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 a certified Iyengar yoga teacher and director of AHA’s curriculum and outreach programs. For 25+ 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. She studies weekly with Jill Johnson and Janice Vien with whom she completed her two-year teacher training program. She also studies regularly with Peentz Dubble and Miko Kanamaru.

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. and certified Anusara-Inspired™ yoga teacher, has been teaching hatha yoga since 1998. In 2000, she met John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga, and since then, her extensive training includes nearly 1000 hours of instruction in this tradition, primarily with John Friend and Senior Anusara teacher, Deb Neubauer. Presently working toward her Anusara Yoga certification, Michele continues to enhance her yoga studies with frequent Anusara workshops and trainings. Michele weaves into each class her knowledge of yoga philosophy and a creative, challenging posture flow that will open, inspire, and uplift every level of your being!

Email Michel George.

Jennifer Sargent

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 Sargent.

Jyoti Hansa

Jyoti Hansa has been studying and teaching the art of yoga and its philosophies since the mid-1960s. She met and studied with B.K.S. Iyengar in 1974 and her style of teaching dramatically changed. From that point to this, she has dedicated her life’s work to the Iyengar style of yoga. In January 1983, she was certified as an Iyengar Teacher by Sri Iyengar himself and her passion for this method has continued to distinguish her as an exceptional Iyengar teacher. Additionally, Jyoti is a registered Experienced Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance (E-RYT 500/500).

She owned and taught at a successful studio in Massachusetts for many years and, while living in Vermont, organized Spiritual Study Groups and Retreats with a group of adepts she affectionately refers to as her “Sacred Circle”. Patricia Walden claims Jyoti Hansa as her “first Iyengar teacher”. Ms. Hansa taught at several New England colleges, including Smith, Wellesley and Dartmouth, offering “for credit” classes as well as extracurricular classes for students, faculty and staff. Ms. Hansa has offered workshops around the country. She has mastery in teaching individuals with limitations or “special needs” classes, and has developed extraordinarily effective methods for teaching teens through retirement-aged populations.

She enjoys working “one on one” in private instruction and has been actively training other teachers in the Iyengar method since 1974. She is currently on a one year sabbatical having just returned to Vermont permanently after an absence of ten years. Ms. Hansa honors her primary USA Iyengar teacher, Ramanand Patel, with the strong roots she has in the Iyengar community and her tireless growth within it.

Email Jyoti Hansa.

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.