key west yoga sanctuary

Originally from Chicago, Ms. Sally has been a part of the Key West community since 2009. She spent 11 years teaching at The Montessori Children’s School working with primary and elementary aged children. She found her love of Yoga when incorporating it into her classroom routine. While observing her students she noticed yoga was positively altering their classroom behaviors and improving their academic performances while also building more meaningful interpersonal relationships with their peers. When leaving the school, she wanted to continue to teach the rewarding effects yoga can have on a growing and developing child.

Ms. Sally has been teaching Kids Yoga at the Yoga Sanctuary for the past year. She teaches a simple flow that the kids can also practice at home. Breathing, mediation, and mindfulness are incorporated into the weekly practice. Sally emphasizes that breathing is one of the most important works to do in yoga and in life when dealing with stressors. Mediation is used to calm the body and mind and is encouraged to be used outside of kids’ yoga practice.  Mindfulness is taught by paying full attention to something, thereby teaching the child how to slow down, let go of certain thoughts, emotions, and situations the mind wants to hold onto. In addition to what is offered at Kids Yoga she also makes plenty of time for games, partner yoga, projects, and forming new relationships. Yoga supports the growing child by helping them improve their focus, memory, self-esteem, academic performance, reducing anxiety and stress. Come join Ms. Sally every Thursday from 4pm-5pm/ KIDS YOGA.

Amanda began her yoga journey in 2016. After an awakening while reading The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle she began simple meditation practices. Then a college course in Eastern Philosophy and Religion sparked a light inside. Amanda graduated with a BA in Psychology and was looking for a relationship with reality that would provide a larger purpose. Not to merely exist in the world but to truly live. So began her studies in to yoga as a way of life.

Amanda received her 200hr Yoga Teaching Certification through the Key West Yoga Sanctuary. She strives to incorporate yogic principles into her teachings. Often her vinyasa style classes combine pranayama, mudras, and intention with the physical movement.

She believes yoga is for anybody and everybody. Union of the body and mind creates an awareness that is the light that brings forth personal growth.

Born and raised in Key West, Lauren Thompson has dedicated the last two years to teaching Yoga throughout our island community, cultivating her own practice and teaching style. As a dancer and choreographer her yoga incorporates some non-traditional techniques for stretching and opening the whole body. She is a firm believer in the benefits of yoga's connection of breath and movement and the healing aspects of this both in the body and mind. Her practice is meant to awaken all aspects of your Self so that you may carry that peace with you throughout the day and hopefully into the next.    Join Lauren for her. Gentle Felxibility on Monday's at noon and her Intense Vinyasa Flow class on Wednesday's 10:15-11:45am.  

Sharon Cleere is the founder of Meditation Corporation, Author of Namaste Rainbow, and has been a certified meditation guide, yoga instructor and hypnotist for many years.  Today she wakes up with a big smile on her face because her clients have the information and tools the need to heal and grow on their terms.  Her guided meditations and private coaching sessions meet at the intersection of modern neuroscience, ancient wisdom and light-hearted healing. 

Kristen Peterson

Florida native, Kristen Peterson, is a graphic designer by day and yoga instructor by night. Her practice began in 2011 with the intention of using yoga as a tool to generate inspiration for her creative work. The sense of connection and community she felt from this practice led her to earn her 200-hour teacher certification in 2017 and her 300-hour teacher certification in 2021. Kristen’s objective as a teacher is to provide space that is all-inclusive, allowing students, through breath, mindful movement and mediation, to connect to their authentic selves.

@krissypete1716

Ranya Cooke

For Ranya, Yoga is about growing stronger, becoming fearless and more compassionate both on and off the mat.  Through a lighthearted approach to teaching, she brings students to a place of joy and they go home refreshed and with a calm state of mind.  Join her for a practice filled with love and gratitude!

@ranyac

Olivia was born and raised in the Keys and was introduced to yoga while in middle school. She has over 500 hours of teacher training and her main teachers are Colleen Saidman Yee and Rodney Yee. Her classes take an alignment-based approach and she aims to use yoga as a tool for exploring our connection to ourselves and the world, while looking deeply at our human experience.

Olivia offers morning vinyasa and restorative yoga every Saturday.

Instagram: @olivialmanz

Facebook: olivia.manz.1

Malaika DosRemedios / restorative via zoom

Malaika DosRemedios (E-RYT-500+, and YACEP) for just over 12 years now, is a full-time teacher of the Tantric Tradition of Hatha Yoga in the Burlington, Vermont area during the late Spring to mid Fall and lives in Key West, Florida during the Winter. She has been a dedicated and long time student practicing yoga since 2002 and has been leading and guiding students and teachers since 2009.

Her offerings are based in Tantra Yoga, in the context of the Sri Vidya tradition of India, one of the oldest schools of Tantra. Sri Vidya can be defined as the "knowledge of that which is most beautiful” or “the science of being”, going beyond the physical body to become awakened to the more subtle forces within, the self becomes part of the greater universe. Through Tantra Yoga one is said to be able to ultimately reach a state of eternal bliss, remembering and tasting that which we really are...whole, complete, and fulfilled. 

Malaika is a trauma informed teacher and has been drawn to help others heal and find peace, as her own life journey and exploration to heal and find peace within and around, started at a very young age. She believes everyone deserves to feel good and to find liberation within by understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma and how yoga and movement can help gain clarity, understanding and most of all empowerment.

She enjoys working with communities, of all ages, inspiring others into their best selves. She is a community partner, and consultant with other yoga communities globally, helping to fine tune their vision and creates collaborative partnerships with other teachers and studios involving yoga retreats, teacher trainings and events throughout the world.

She and her beloved Yellow Lab “Teddy” - whom is a certified Therapy Dog of Vermont, like to volunteer in their free time unleashing smiles to folks in need of personal visits.

Through her classes, workshops and trainings she loves to share in the gifts of yoga to others for thriving in the world and cultivating joy and gratitude within themselves.  She enjoys working with different teachers and in different environments to help others to find their yoga and what this means to everyone individually as there are many truths. 

This is her lives work and it never stops evolving.

Malaika holds a BSW- of Social Work from the University of Vermont, and has worked with children and families professionally and as a volunteer. She holds certifications in the Tantric Tradition of Hatha Yoga, Yoga Nidra, IASH Certified Sound Healer with Tibetan Singing Bowls.

Natalia Duke is our favorite pilates instructor. She offers mat pilates every Tuesday and Thursday morning in our garden. 

Natalia is also a yogi, her yoga practice informs her activism and her activism informs her teaching. Her classes offer space to reflect on how our thoughts, words, and actions impact the collective good: how our practices on the mat influence and affect social change off the mat.  Through attention to the breath and simple asana, she encourages us to skillfully take action to create a compassionate and just world, a world that allows all of us to live, be seen, and breathe.  

Natalia Duke is a 500-hour certified yoga teacher.  Her teachers and influences include A.G. Mohan, Janet Stone, and Michelle C. Johnson.  She also teaches Pilates, practices Thai Yoga Bodywork, and is a community organizer.   

Erika Hawks is a yogini who loves to share the benefits of yoga with anyone who is interested.  Through her classes she offers a compassionate, accesible and open-hearted approach to ashtanga yoga.

An Ashtangi at heart, Erika began teaching yoga in 2011 at Miami Life Center in Miami Beach, with the blessing of her teachers Kino MacGregor and Tim Feldmann. After moving to Key West in 2014, she found a home at the Yoga Sanctuary. Today she feels grateful to be able to welcome you into that home.

A student of Ayurveda, Erika is a certified Ayurvedic Health Counselor and continues her studies at SAI Ayurvedic Institute.  Before committing full-time to her yoga mat, Erika graduated from the University of Miami with a J.D. in 2002.

Instagram @erikahawks

Jo Anne became intrigued and inspired by Yoga after discovering Ricahrd Hittleman's Indroduction to Yoga in the seventies. Her Yoga practice became serious while raising three teenage sons, running a business with her husband, and searching for peace and calm in a chaotic world. In 2007, with her youngest off to college, Jo Anne enrolled in 200-hour teacher training with Vibhuti School of Yoga. She began teacging in a Wellness Community to cancer survivors and saw the profound effects of this sacred healing practice on all levels of being. She created a safe sapce for her students to come abd breathe and be and was instrumental in expanding the practice off the mat and into this heart-felt comminuty. 

Being a lofelong learner, Jo Anne continued her studies at Kripalu retreat center and receive her 500-hour designation in 2017. She believes we create our best selves through the practice of being present.

Jo Anne is a Reiki Master, a passionate mediator, an enthusiastic student who loves writting, tennis, reading, and her new granndaughter. 

Šárka is certified Kundalini Yoga teacher level I since 2007 and has finished level II Authentic Relationship training in 2008.

She is an Early Childhood Educator and a teacher. She has MS degree in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on Marriage and Family Therapy with deep understanding of Human Development and the importance of keeping your body, mind and soul in harmony. Her lifelong commitment to her spiritual practice, love for life and learning inspires students, children she teaches and her clients she works with.

“I encountered Kundalini Yoga in 2006 when my life was at its lowest point. Emotionally, mentally, physically. I did not have the money to start yoga training and I was given a meditation for prosperity to solve this problem. I did the meditation everyday for 40 days and at the end I was rewarded by being able to take the training. Since then I never looked back. KY changed my life in many ways and brought out the light that was sleeping deep down in my soul. I love sharing my light, knowledge and passion in my classes.”

Sharka offers Kundalini Yoga in the evenings every Tuesday and Thursday.

Donna Stabile / Vinyasa Flow 

Born and raised in and around New York City, Donna began her yoga journey in 2000 practicing Bikram as a complement to her passion for marathon running. She enjoyed the heat and the physicality of the practice along with the sense of community It offered.
In 2006, Donna was devastated with the news of a breast cancer diagnosis where she ran the gamut of emotions that went along with this life changing event. She quickly learned how important a healthy mind and body was when undergoing treatment and she found herself escaping to the “hot room” after each of her radiation treatments.
6 months later, Donna was on the “Other Side” and continued practicing the 26 posture series for the next 6 years before moving to Key West in 2013.
After a few months on the island, Donna started exploring other yoga studios and soon realized there was something missing from her practice after taking a class with Gretchen at the Yoga Sanctuary. It just kind of clicked! She found herself practicing different types of hatha and vinyasa classes and really making the mind, breath and body connection.
Unfortunately, her cancer returned in 2014 and additional surgery and further treatments were needed but her passion and commitment to yoga was stronger than ever. Her daily yoga practice along with maintaining a healthy plant based diet for 40 years made a huge difference in her recovery and thankfully, Donna is cancer free once again!
She finally decided to take her practice to the next level and completed the 200 hour teacher training in 2020. Knowing how much yoga helped her, she really wanted to give back, and pay it forward. She started teaching a group of friends immediately after her certification and then joined the Yoga Sanctuary team.

Instagram: DonnaStabile

Facebook: Donna Stabile

Lea Moeller

Lea leads movement classes that are influenced by Vinyasa Yoga & the Pilates Method. She integrates free-diving breath-work with intentional, controlled movements to strengthen the body and quiet the mind.

Lea began her asana practice as a teenager in an attempt to balance the physical demands of running track. She quickly found that she was getting much more than a physical benefit from the practice and began exploring various schools and styles.

Lea’s class incorporates a strong physical practice to encourage absolute focus, to balance the mind, and connect to the spirit.

When Lea is not on the mat you can find her exploring the physical wonders of the world. She is a level 1 free-diver who enjoys being on the water as much as possible, especially in her hometown of Key West. She spent the past year in New England in the trails and woods of Western Mass. and is excited to be home for the season to offer intentional movement classes to the island community that incorporate a lot of self-love & a little laughter.

@lealunayoga

I am a multi modal artist. I hold a BA in fine art from Hampshire College. I work in painting, drawing, jewelry, printmaking, poetry, and dance. For ten years my work focused on landscape. I am a certified Tamalpa practitioner registered with ISMETA. I offer somatic based expressive arts education and therapy to individuals and groups. I am fortunate to be alive on a continuing journey with metastatic breast cancer. I feel honored and humbled to be able to bring forward  my art and experience to inspire and assist others.

I assist people who:

-desire improved physical, emotional and mental function in interactions with self, others and environments.

-have a health goal or are navigating a health challenge.

-are integrating a significant life event and/or desiring a more harmonious, integrated life.

In developing their ability to:

-experience an embodied life

-access their innate creative wisdom

-find their own best answers