Meet the team
“Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself.”
— John McCain
Meet our Board of Directors

Nancy Deville
Founder, Executive Director
Nancy began practicing yoga in 1997 and has studied Hatha, Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Bikrim. She began meditation in 2008 and has become a student of Dr. Joe Dispenza. In 2014, as a guest teacher, she felt a deep connection to the people incarcerated at Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Her vision in founding PY+M is to teach yoga and meditation with love, compassion and shared humanity to those who have endured trauma and incarceration so that they can cope with PTSD and Post Incarceration Syndrome and realize the full expression of their lives. Nancy is a novelist, memoirist, designer, painter and author of books in the health genre. She lives on the beach with Mike and their whippet, Scarlett.

John Hartmann

Ana Cristina Nery
Director / Certified Senior Instructor
Tina is grateful to bring trauma-informed yoga and meditation to a wide array of audiences including yogis, recovering gang members, incarcerated men and women, and The Walt Disney Company. She recognizes the soul transformation we all are seeking whether it’s your first or four hundredth class. By working with the body, mind, and breath we heal from within, transfer our wounds into motivators for self-discovery, and gain compassion for each other’s suffering. Tina’s own soul journey continues as she remains grateful for the mud from which we all grow and leads us to share our unique gifts in service to our communities and the Earth.

Greta Ronningen
Certified Senior Instructor
Sister Greta is an Episcopal priest and member of the Community of Divine Love, a monastic community in Central California. She was the Co-Director of PRISM Restorative Justice a ministry of spiritual care in the Los Angeles County jails for over 13 years. She is an advocate for those living behind bars and seeks to raise awareness of the injustice of mass incarceration. Greta currently facilitates restorative justice programs and Victim Awareness classes in the California state prison system. A yoga practitioner with over 40 years of experience, she co-founded Yoga Works in Los Angeles and Yoga Zone in New York City. She is the author of Free on the Inside: Finding God Behind Bars.

Mike Averill
Certified Senior Instructor

Chris Spurrell
Director of Meditation
Meet our instructors

De Jur
Certified Senior Instructor
De Jur is a Los Angeles based, Loyola Marymount University certified Yoga Therapist under the guidance of Dr. Larry Payne. Her interest to teach Yoga off of the mainstream path was sparked by an article about prison yoga. She’s a certified Accessible Yoga Teacher and Ambassador by Rev. Jivana Heyman. De Jur recently added Julian Walker and Hala Khouri’s trauma-informed 200-hour certification to her resumé. She teaches trauma-informed, accessible Yoga Therapy to the sensitive needs population, maximum-security males, and women in California jails and prisons. She also holds classes with youth in the juvenile justice system, juvenile halls, probation camps, and staff around LA County.

Wendy
Senior Certified Instructor

Janelle
Certified Instructor

Jan
Certified Senior Instructor
In 2009 Jan could not hear her yoga instructor telling her “yoga will transform you.” After being urged by a friend, she joined a 200 hour RYT class in 2014. She has continued her yoga education since, committing herself to trainings and certifications every 6 months. Jan taught yoga in a county minimum security prison that houses women (including pregnant women) from 2016 to 2020. She teaches at a Pasadena area mental health program and to women attending a literacy program at South Central Los Angeles Ministry Project. Jan is also honored to be the organizer of two Yoga of 12 Step Recovery groups.

Katherine
Instructor
Katherine likes to say that yoga found her when she was 11 years old. She wandered into a studio down her street and has been down-doggin’ since. At 17 she signed up for her first teacher training at Santa Monica Yoga where she was introduced to her beloved Ashtanga Yoga. At Sarah Lawrence College, she found ballet and modern dance. With confidence to choreograph and create, vinyasa started flowing through her, and they’ve quite a pair since. She learned to ride a bike in 2015 and can’t get enough of those canyon trails!

Diane
Instructor

Shaun
Instructor

Kristin
Instructor

Erin
Instructor

Molly
Certified Senior Instructor

Jana
Senior Certified Instructor

Sarit
Certified Senior Instructor
Sarit was introduced to yoga as a young girl, practicing with her mom on Santa Monica beach. She holds a 200-HR certification from Julian Walker and Hala Khouri’s Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind. Sarit has trained with Street Yoga, Uprising Yoga, Hatha-Dharma, Yoga for All Ambassador, and an Accessible Yoga Ambassador. Sarit’s focus is self-regulation using breath and tracking of the felt sense to create trauma-sensitive awareness.She is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, NeuroAffective Touch practitioner, and currently assists Somatic Experiencing (SE™) trainings. Sarit integrates SE™ into her yoga teaching through raising awareness to the felt sense and nurturing embodiment. Sarit encourages her students to look for Pockets of Peace as they practice, a term she created to refer to the high stress environments she teaches in and the inability to fully self regulate. Finding a Pocket of Peace reminds us that we are able to experience presence and calm in a single moment.

Aparna
Instructor

Peter
Instructor

Sharrỏn
Certified Senior Instructor

Cameron
Instructor

Taina
Instructor

Fitzjoy
Certified Senior Instructor
An internationally traveling music industry tour manager, Fitzjoy found yoga in 2007 after lower back and knee surgery stopped him from running and practicing martial arts. Fitjoy’s training includes a 500 hour Hot Yoga certification, Tony Sanchez’s master core 40, Trauma Informed Training with Uprising Yoga and Street Yoga, Restorative yoga L1 with Judith Lasater and 200 hour Wanderlust Vinyasa Training. He is currently completing Noah Maze’s 300 hour Vinyasa Training. Fitjoy’s passion to help people achieve greater bodies, stronger minds, long vitality and better health takes him into LA’s downtown juvenile detention hall, as well as instructing artist clients and touring crews. He teaches inrandom places around the world.

Serenity
Senior Certified Instructor

Jennifer
Certified Senior Instructor

Rachel
Instructor

Brian
Instructor

Lydia
Instructor
Cicely
Instructor

Amanda
Instructor

John
Instructor
Ready to Make a Change?
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