Meet Our Instructors
Our volunteers are beautiful, aware, unique individuals who teach prisoners because they have all experienced healing through yoga and meditation.
“Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself.”
— John McCain

Nancy
Founder, Executive Director
Nancy began practicing yoga in 1997. Her practice includes Hatha, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Bikrim and myriad spin offs she believes would make Krishnamacharya smile. She began Mindful Meditation in 2008 and also practices her own method of connecting with the breath. Her vision in founding PY+M is to share yoga and meditation with love, compassion and respect to those who have endured trauma and incarceration so that they can cope with PTSD and Post Incarceration Syndrome, avoid reoffending, and go on to the full expression of their lives. Nancy is a novelist, memoirist, designer, and author of numerous books in the health genre. She lives on the beach with her whippet, Scarlett.

De Jur
Certified Senior Instructor

Allison
Instructor

Jennifer
Certified Senior Instructor
Born and raised in California, Jennifer Herrera has been practicing yoga for fifteen years. In 2016, she completed a 500 hour professional yoga teacher training with YogaWorks. Jennifer has extensive experience volunteering at men and women’s prisons with The Freedom to Choose Project. She is a life and business coach, consultant to emerging companies and brands, and a writer. Jennifer is a devoted encourager of the Soul and her mission is to assist others in healing and living more purposeful lives. She holds a Masters Degree in Spiritual Psychology with an Emphasis in consciousness, health, and healing.

Jan
Certified Senior Instructor

Chris
Director of Meditation

Sarit
Certified Senior Instructor
Sarit co-manages the scheduling for two facilities. She 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.

Molly
Certified Senior 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.

Wendy
Instructor

Jennifer
Certified Senior Instructor

Roxanna
Instructor

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!

Penny
Instructor

Mike
Certified Senior Instructor

Peter
Instructor

Julie
Instructor
Julie is a board-certified family doctor who believes that yoga is a practice from which everyone can benefit. Left with severe burnout after 20 years of medical practice and teaching, she took time off for exploration and self-care. It was during this sabbatical that she recognized the healing power of yoga for herself, and she completed teacher training with Dana Kraft and Jennifer Smith at Yoga108. Julie’s main goal as a yoga teacher is to empower each student to connect with the healthiest self through yoga. She hopes to create an all-inclusive environment, regardless of ability, age, or gender.

Daniel
Meditation Instructor

Matthew
Instructor

Rachel
Instructor

Charlie
Master Hypnotherpist

Diane
Instructor

Jana
Instructor

Janelle
Certified Instructor

Sharrỏn
Certified Senior Instructor

Mayuri
Instructor

Natalie
Certified Instructor
Natalie has over 30 years of yoga practice and has completed training in trauma-sensitive yoga, mindfulness and meditation. For 15 years, Natalie served as Co-Founder and Chair of two foundations providing vision, inspiration, and strategy behind their initiatives in early childhood education, food system reform, youth development, education, and disaster readiness. In 2016, she launched a new foundation to pursue her donor activist interests. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of One Heart World-Wide, and is a member of Women Moving Millions, Impact Partners, and UCSB’s Council for Arts & Lectures. She’s served on boards of Direct Relief, All Kinds of Minds, and Montana Yellowstone Expeditions. Natalie enjoys empowering women, engaging conversations, hiking, skiing, travel and volunteering.

Lizbeth
Instructor

Brian Gallo
Instructor

Serenity
Instructor

Tea
Certified Senior Instructor

Aparna
Instructor
Born and raised in Texas, Aparna first took her first yoga class towards the end of high school with an introductory month at her local studio. It wasn’t until moving to NYC in 2015 that she became serious about her practice to complement her training in Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance she has been practicing since childhood. Professionally, Aparna works in post-production and is a recent transplant to LA as of November 2019. She is actively seeking ways to integrate her passions of dance, yoga, and movement along with social issues.

Alexis
Instructor

Chanté
Instructor
Chanté started her relationship with yoga in 2013 with one pose, child’s pose. The one pose she always found herself coming back to for years, making her mat and practice her safe place. As she started to heal through her yoga practice, she realized she wanted to be of service to her community. After 6 years of practice, Chanté received her RYT-200 certificate. Servicing special populations has been the basis of her teaching career and has given her the courage to fulfil her life’s purpose of servicing those in need.
Ready to Make a Change?
With your tax deductible donation, we can help more prisoners heal. Your generosity can change lives. Please share in our dream. We cannot do this without your help.