Generosity is a pillar that endures

NEWS: YOGA DANA FOUNDATION AWARDS 'YOGA FOR SENIORS' GRANT TO COLLECTIVE MEMBER VLAD MOSKOVSKI - JANUARY, 2012

BACK TO TOP

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Jonathan Reynolds was born in Wisconsin in 1973, and received his BA in Biology from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1996.  Soon after his time at Lawrence, an interest in art and philosophy combined with his newfound love of yoga and meditation, led him to the University of WI-Madison to study Western Philosophy, Buddhism, and Hinduism.  At each step of the way, he refined the thread of his path — his interest in the relationship between seer, seeing, seen, and simplicity.

More prone to self-guided inquiry, Jonathan continued his studies in various experiential ways, one of which was to begin teaching the many mindfulness tools he’d acquired.  Soon after his first trip to India he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.  In addition to yoga and meditation, Jonathan's passions in life include India, family, reading, travel, nature, tea, mindful community, and freedom.  He is a husband and a father, and currently resides in Berkeley, California, where he offers private psychotherapy sessions, teaches meditation and yoga, enjoys drinking tea, and occasionally offers retreats both locally and worldwide.

Jonathan has trained with the White Lotus Foundation, Erich Schiffmann, and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.  He is currently enrolled in JFK University’s Graduate Counseling Psychology Program, and hopes to further integrate the practices of meditation, therapy, embodiment, and conscious relationship into his own life and work.  Jonathan’s teaching is born out of a deep gratitude for the inner relief and freedom that his own practice has provided over the years.  Drawing on many wisdom traditions, his teaching and psychotherapy sessions are centrally rooted in Buddhist Vipassana Meditation, the Classical Yoga of Patanjali, and the Nondual Advaita Vedanta teachings of Shankara.  Generally speaking, Jonathan’s teaching is greatly informed by his love of India, the cultural present and historical context of this sacred and enchanting land.  His manner of teaching meditation is greatly influenced by time spent in the presence of Jack Kornfield, whose wisdom has infused Jonathan’s voice with compassion, playfulness, and story.   www.ayogisway.com


TREASURER

Anne Amis has been practicing yoga since 1998 and became certified and started teaching in 2006.  She hopes to encourage others to experience the life-changing effects that yoga and meditation have brought her, and is therefore delighted to have been asked to help build the Learning To Listen community.  A native Californian, Anne spent her childhood in North Carolina and is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz.  At her day job, Anne works as Director of Finance & Operations for Zeum, San Francisco's children's museum.  She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Tom De Carlo, and their daughters, Sara and Alice.





SECRETARY & CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

Lauren Gonzalez is a writer, editor, and graduate student in transpersonal psychology at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California.  She has a diverse background in the arts, including painting, filmmaking, photography and sculpture in addition to writing, and art is the sub-current that runs beneath all that she does in life.  She holds a MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, in Bronxville, NY, and has done extensive oral history and profile writing.  She teaches heart-centered memoir and creative writing to a range of students, from young children to former prisoners and adults who speak English as a second language.  She has tutored at the Fortune Society in Manhattan, and has taught writing workshops for NYU’s Gallatin Writing Program, and the San Francisco Public Library.  She is the creator and editor of the anthology, Submerged: Tales From the Basin, which was published in September 2008 (StepSister Press, Chicago).  A percentage of the book’s sales benefit ongoing Hurricane Katrina relief programs in New Orleans.  Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and literary journals since 1994, as well as in television and Internet publications such as Wired and CNet.  Lauren hosted a ZDTV (now G4 Network) television show called GameSpot TV, and produced a weekly webcast for Sony Computer Entertainment America.

She is completing her first novel, The Junkyard, and has begun work on a second.  In 2006, she won a Hispanic Scholarship Fund/McNamara Family Creative Arts Project grant to complete a book of non-fiction, Animal People, which profiles individuals who have remarkable and unusual connections with animals.  She has interviewed people from backgrounds as diverse as David Bowie to artist/musician DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller).

Since 2008 Lauren has been working with shamanic teachers from New York to New Mexico to the Sierras to the Bay Area to expand the nature-based spirituality she spent many years developing on her own.  She plans to meld her writing, shamanic work, filmmaking, and teaching with her work as a therapist, focusing on narrative, art, and photo-therapy as well as ecotherapy.   Lauren's work is inspired by the spirit of creativity that weaves art, narrative, and nature together to build communities and to heal one another and our planet.     www.laurengonzalez.com


EVENTS COORDINATOR

Jen Burk Reynolds has been teaching yoga since 2003.  A life long lover of nature, animals, elders and the written word, Jen also loves to travel, cook and commune with friends and family.  Contemplative from an early age, Jen feels that through yoga and, most recently meditation, her practice is slowly deepening and becoming a synthesis of all the things she loves the most.  Along with her partner, Jonathan and their son Henry, Jen intends to continue to explore the world, practicing mindfulness along the way, and holds as her deepest goal to share the many blessings she has been entrusted with in this life.  Jen currently lives and teaches in San Francisco, California but happily calls the whole world her home.     www.twowingsyoga.com

BACK TO TOP

ADVISORY & RESOURCES COUNCIL

Bidyut 'B.K.' Bose is the founder and Executive Director of Niroga Institute. Bidyut earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley and spent many years in research and development in Silicon Valley. He has multiple patents to his credit, and has presented at international conferences and at universities around the world. Having learned yoga and meditation from his father since he was a child, and later with monks in the Himalayas, he longed for greater integration of his personal and professional life. Inspired since childhood by the twin ideals of self-realization and selfless service, he founded Niroga Institute in 2005, and his research interests have now shifted to the scientific application of TLS and developing cost-effective architectures for lasting social transformation.


Niroga Institute is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that strives to foster health and well being for individuals, families, and communities through the practice of Yoga. The Niroga Center in Berkeley is operated by the Niroga Institute and offers classes for people of all ages, sizes, and abilities.



Holiday Johnson  I came to yoga a little later on in life, already a wife and mother of three beautiful daughters.  My first yoga experience was very challenging for me, and I had several different emotions come up during that class.  After it's completion I felt a change for the better on many different levels, and it was this direct experience that was the seed of my calling as a yoga teacher and as a lifelong yoga student.  I began teaching yoga to anyone who would listen, the girls in my Brownie group...the ladies in the PTA.  I found that my own personal practice was greatly enhanced by sharing it with others.

Soon after moving to Portland, Oregon, I found Gisele Fitch, an amazing woman who was connected with many of the senior Yoga Instructors in the world at that time.  Gisele believed in fostering a community of yogis and often hosted workshops taught by visiting master teachers.  She generously created an opportunity for me to work with her coordinating these workshops, and this allowed me to study with numerous gifted teachers.  And it was in 1991 that I officially opened the first Holiday's Health & Fitness Yoga Center.

Having been a teenage mother, I feel strongly about working with youth, especially with adolescent girls as these years can be filled with so much change and anxiety, especially around body image.  In 1992 I founded Standing on Your Own Two Feet, a nonprofit yoga program designed specifically for teens.  My intention was to encourage and develop the potential in young people through the practice and wisdom of yoga.  Standing on Your Own Two Feet has become a nationally recognized yoga program and continues to serve hundreds of teens in educational and recreational settings each year.  I believe that yoga is an opportunity for us all to come together to meet and develop the finest qualities of who we are.  I continue to feel blessed to be in the position of sharing the wisdom of yoga with others in my global community.  Breathe & smile, Holiday     www.holidaysyogacenter.com



John Brown  Each of my life’s practices have revealed to me these crucial and ever-evolving perspectives and inquiries: 1) is this a friendly or a hostile world? 2) the difference between symbiotic and parasitic relationships, 3) why choosing partnership over dominator structures is so important, and 4) the need for compassion rather than malevolence in all relationships.  These perspectives have helped me to set the stage for daily remembering and a continual returning to my own path of peace.  The most recent and engaging adventure in this “patchwork quilt” has been the discovery and development of Rooms For Peace (more about this project can be found at ChangeXChange).  Rooms For Peace sees a world where unrealized human resources are recognized and can then be skillfully dedicated to support peace, justice, human rights, and healthy environments.  This vision comes to life by connecting travelers having lodging money with like-hearted people having available guest rooms – the unused/liberated money can then be directed towards Affiliated Peace Charities; and all of these newly available resources can then find their creative expression via the conscious choice and values of multiple individuals rather than a limited number of large corporations.

It was during the 70s and 80s that my own relationship to grass roots activism picked up considerable speed.   During this time I was a founding board member of the Alternative Energy Resources Organization and also of Zarathustra’s Garden – a local Montana organic grain grower’s certification / marketing co-op.  I also sat on the boards of the Northern Plains Resources Council and of Oregon Tilth.  This process of an unfolding contrast and transition continued to deepen for me for about 15 years until I found myself turning a massage hobby into a profession that eventually integrated the practices of hypnotherapy and personal coaching.

Since 2000 I have been engaged in multiple political activities surrounding the Department of Peace legislation; and the last several years have also included interest in and practice of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication work.   How do we actually arrive at and practice inner peace?  This question led me to develop an Inner Department of Peace Resolution and a workshop presentation exploring this exercise.  All of these activities have been softened by 10 years of singing with the Satori Men’s Chorus, Men Singing Peace.  With a lifetime of perspective, it has become clear to me that every one of my life’s activities has been an exploration in learning how to live peacefully in a peaceful world, and thus they have all also been an exercise in my own development as a social and cultural artist.     www.roomsforpeace.org     'Rooms Blog'



Mary Watson is the founding Director of Sandtray in Education, and consultant for San Francisco Unified School.  She has work experience of more than seventeen years in seeing students individually for Sandtray in schools in the San Francisco area, training interns and volunteers, and holding supervision groups.  For the last three years, she has worked in assisted living and hospital situations and has developed a form of Sandtray called "Storytelling with Miniatures."     Mary's Sandplay Article
September '09 SF Zen Center Profile Article

BACK TO TOP