Authentic Yoga Studies

Studying yoga was a serious undertaking as it should be for anyone since it is a life long practice entrenched in a long history. Proper yoga study keeps with the tradition of teachers from the practice's origin (India), handing down the teachings to their students in a lineage of students and teachers that protect yoga from becoming diluted or inaccurate.

Sleeping in the Himalayas

Honoring this tradition, Karen ventured to the foothills of the Himalayas where she received her RYT 200 Ashtanga and Hatha teaching certification from the Aryan Yoga & Reiki Centre in McLeod Ganj, India, home to the current exiled Dalai Lama and Tibetan government. In this auspicious, precious town, she stepped back to a time free of commercialism that focused on daily spirituality. Experiencing individualized training in small sessions honed Karen's ability to provide proper adjustments. Learning proper adjustments is a rare component of trainings found in the West due to crowded classes that concentrate on the physical aspects of yoga.  Her intensive training stressed Ashtanga’s evidence-based practices for health and alignment, postures maximizing blood circulation flow, and breath coordination over just flexibility. This authentic training ensures her ability to teach the long term physical health, strength, and effective internal focus yoga students need to learn, especially for giving private lessons. 

Continuing training, Karen completed Advanced Ashtanga training with David Swenson, the leading modern authority in Ashtanga, who trained for decades under Pahtabi Jois, founder of Ashtanga yoga, which is the original codified yoga posture system as we know today. This is the 8 limb yoga system based on Patanjalis Ygoa Sutras, wherein the postures are only one of the 8 components in yoga goals and benefits.

Equally important to the physical components of yoga, Karen received meditation training in Zen Mindfulness from Tibetan monks in the Himalayas.  While studying meditation in the Tibetan region of India, she began exploring deeply the Buddhist traditions of mindfulness, insight, and analytical meditation: a linage of practices now being adopted by the West in all areas from modern psychology, to medicine, to training in government.  She underwent a vow of silence for weeks to practice patience and gain insight into recognizing ones true core. Blessed also during this time in the Himalayas, Karen volunteered to teach English to Tibetan monks and their community as well as to attend several teachings from the Dalai Lama.

Undergoing an intense internal shift, Karen's trajectory took aim at spreading mindfulness and dharma.  In adherence to her background in law and community development, she became interested in the integration of yoga and meditation with public health initiatives and education programs meant to raise social consciousness for children and the public at large. Her life's missions with law and community development now clarified and aligned with yoga's bridging of people with more practices of philosophic substance.

Seeing Yoga as the bridge into mediation and Dharma (life philosophy of higher consciousness), Karen focuses on teaching mediation and dharma from a secular perspective, allowing individuals to embrace and explore their spirituality. In keeping with this focus, she returned to the US and expanded her education, obtaining a Mindfulness Mediation (MBSR) certification from the University of California San Diego to better align her personal meditation and sanga (group) practices with science. MBSR is the most highly regarded evidence based meditation program and is integrated in medicine now along with children's mindfulness curriculum with Mission Be, a non-profit organization. Karen's life's dream and mission is to bring this evidence-based meditation curriculum (derived from a secular Buddhism) to schools, hospitals, and companies.  To this end, she accomplishes her mission using beach yoga, yoga in the wild, corporate retreats, and mindfulness courses she teaches at schools, hospitals and companies.

Karen also received training in Indian and Tibetan Ayurvedic healing, which concentrates on seeing the food you eat as medicine. This alternative practice has many components with documented positive results and has been in use 4000 years longer than western medicine.  

Western research in mindfulness has been ongoing for the last 30 years, and much excitement abounds as new evidence indicates just how interdependent our minds are with our bodies; and just how much we still do not understand.  Ironically, science is "catching up" by embracing thousands of years of Buddhist traditions and practices.

Sunset Yoga on Waikiki Beach

Today, Karen teaches Ashtanga based Vinyasa Flow, which can be more dynamic or more relaxing according to the needs of the students.  She loves Ashtanga's ability to mindfully control and raise physicality through focus, alignment, and balance, similar to martial arts practices this practice focuses on stillness and simplicity of cues for learning and meditation benefits.  As a jazz and Polynesian dancer growing up, Karen naturally engaged the Vinyasa flow style, where rhythmic music and continuity immerse you in feeling of energized clarity while developing your flexibility, strength and control of energy.  Due to the influence of her background in dance, she incorporates a subtle dimension of fortified grace to the postures. 

~A Note On Karma From Karen~
By incorporating these philosophies and practices, you begin to recognize that your choice of surroundings, your perceptions of occurrences, and what you put into your body are all inter-dependent, manifesting in your mental and physical health. These elements all work to create your future environment and life's occurrences. I continue studies of Buddhism's philosophies, finding them profoundly useful for living well and meaningfully, whether or not one subscribes to Buddhism spiritually. ~Karen Kei