Always driven by physical fitness and creativity, Courtney was a
dancer for 17 years. Born and raised in New Jersey, after high school,
she moved to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a professional
dancer in the Hip Hop world. Instead of her love for dance
flourishing, it dwindled away under the scrutiny of the limelight, and
she decided to give up her dancing dreams and return to New Jersey.
Upon returning to the East Coast, she studied Psychology at The
College of New Jersey. After conducting research one summer at Harvard
University's Emotion, Health & Psychophysiology lab, she saw how a
negative, disease-modeled mind harboring energy blockages can create
such imbalances in our body, which is why it is so important we
release the tension and reduce the stress that accumulates so quickly
in our fast-paced society.
Shortly thereafter, she decided to try a yoga class simply because it
seemed similar to dance. Ever since, she has never looked back. She
delved right into an Immersion to see if this was as enlightening a
practice as she thought, but she was wrong; it was nothing less than
transcendental! Courtney is a 200 hour RYT through the Yoga Alliance
and received her training at YogaLove in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Certified in Vinyasa, she also worked with teachers coming from
backgrounds such as Kundalini, Jivamukti, and Saraswati River Yoga--an
Indian lineage that focuses on the Tantric principles of the Divine
Consciousness and feminine, Shakti power within all of us. In her
classes, she amps up practices by using pieces from the Saraswati
tradition with hands-on assists as an exchange of energy, and the
Bhakti tradition with song and dance as a collective sharing in
energy.
As she opens her heart to yoga, she finds that it is changing her life
in unimaginable ways. Her yogic journey has given her the opportunity
to study under Michael Cremone and teach at Princeton YogaAbove in NJ,
under Julie Samples, Ulla-Britt Fagan and many others in PA, and she
now finds herself back in California, but on a much more fulfilling
path. She is currently in Levels I and II of Larry Payne's Yoga
Therapy Rx program at Loyola Marymount University and working towards
her Masters in Counseling at LMU as well. She is so grateful to have
entered the open arms of Bhakti Yoga Shala. From the moment she walked
into the Shala she knew, "I need not look any further, I am home." She
feels blessed to have found teachers such as Govindas and many others
at BYS who truly live the yoga and continue to motivate her on her
path.
She now integrates her love of dance as she begins to study Yoga Dance
and has been inspired by Govindas's free form practice in Bhakti
classes, which she often incorporates into her own practices. Through
her teaching, she hopes to impart the bliss and fulfillment she finds
in yoga on to her students, and to celebrate the Divine within all of
us!
