Leah Chevalier began her mind/body/consciousness journey as a
professional modern dancer and teacher, performing in the capacity
of both company members and as a project dancer
touring nationally and internationally
in both solo and ensemble work. Her
work as a dancer has been reviewed in the Village Voice and the New
York Times. With training steeped in dance, anatomy, and
kinesiology, and arts management culminating
in
Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in Dance
from Rutgers University. During her
time as a dance teacher taught and choreographed throughout
the US from pre-school-aged and at University level. She has
worked with dancers who continuing their studies to Juilliard and
at after school programs experiencing dance for the first
time.
Leah is PMA-CPT in Pilates with
many years of Pilates, dance, and movement in her background. She
first studied Pilates in New York City, in her training in
classical modern dance at the Alvin Ailey School and Martha Graham
School. Since that time, she has studied with Peak Pilates, Power
Pilates on the West Coast and with Pilates Movement, Gramercy
Pilates, and the Movement Salon in NYC, where she both studied and
received her comprehensive Pilates apparatus and mat training on
scholarship.
Leah began her yoga practice
1993, as a dancer, she was amazed at by what the training offered
physically — practicing yoga on the East Coast with Dharma Mittra
and Jivamukti and Ashtanga yoga on the West Coast. Leah has
E-RYT from Yoga
Alliance. She has spent 15 months at a yoga retreat based on the
teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda
by to deepen her own meditative and
yogic practices as a retreat facilitator and yoga
teacher.
After retiring in 2001 from the
performance, she received formal training in Ashtanga yoga. In
2003, she found a spiritual home within the Tibetan Buddhist
Mahayana tradition. She received refuge from her root
teacher Yangsi Rinpoche of Maitripa, in Portland, Oregon. Her
interest is the link between Mahayana Buddhist teachings, yoga, and
life. In 2010, she received certification from Living Yoga in
Portland, OR, to share yoga with underserved communities. In 2013,
she was attaining 200hr/ 500-hour E-RYT
from Yoga Alliance. She is
never far from her practices in meditation, mantra, pranayama,
yoga, and Pilates in service to family, heart family, and her
community.