Yoga Teachers and Bios

Anjali Budreski, Yoga Mountain's Owner and Director, started the center in July of 2003.  Through her passion and committment to yoga and community she has developed the studio into a reputable and thriving yoga center & healing arts space.

Anjali is passionate about sharing her love of yoga with others and has been immersed in the study of Anusara Yoga since 2004, when she met her first Anusara Teacher, Todd Norian.  She completed a comprehensive 200-hour Anusara Yoga Teacher Training with Deb Neubauer in 2006, and has trained and practiced with a wide variety of Anusara teachers, including Anusara's Founder, John Friend.

Anjali has had the honor of assisting Todd Norian's Teacher Trainings and Immersions as well as Deb Neubauer's Immersions.  She has studied Rajanaka Tantric Philosophy extensively with Douglass Brooks and has also studied with Paul Muller-Ortega. 

Anjali’s classes are powered by the beauty, potency, and alchemy of nature, as well as her inquiry into personal growth and evolution through the lens of Buddhism and Tantric Philosophy.  Her sessions are both grounding and soul-lifting, guiding students to safely deepen their practice and open their hearts.  Her primary invitation to students is the practice of radical self-love & acceptance during every yoga class.   Anjali lives in Montpelier, Vermont (the best place to be!).  When not at the studio she can be found creating healthy culinary delights in the kitchen, taking naps with her black cat Gattaca, sitting on the summit of a mountaintop, swimming in a Cape Cod kettle pond, or taking in the tastes, sights and sounds of a faraway city with her beloved Graham.

Lindsay Armstrong, a Kripalu Certified Yoga Teacher and Massage Therapist, has studied within many yoga traditions in America, India, Thailand and Napal. Her fluid and heart centered teaching style is inspired by Kripalu, Vinyasa Flow, Anusara, and her love of dance.

Katie Harrington is a Kripalu certified yoga teacher, and a certified spiritual life coach as well as a licensed massage therapist. She guides her students to explore their own, natural well being through the art of yoga.

The focus of her classes includes how the yoga feels moment to moment as well as the richness that variety, awareness, and being truly relaxed brings to our overall well being.

Lydia Russell-McDade is a certified Anusara-Inspired tm Yoga Teacher. She has been practicing yoga since 1996 and teaching since 2005. She is honored to have studied intensively with various renowned Anusara teachers, including John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga. Deeply influenced by Tantric yoga philosophy, as well as by the shamanic traditions of her own European ancestors, Lydia’s uplifting teaching style is rooted in the cycles and rhythms of the Earth, and is a celebration of the delicious gift of embodiment. A poet and story-teller, Lydia uses her love of words, nature, and myth to illuminate her students' asana practice as she weaves a web of rich metaphor and imagery to support and guide each student's unique journey. Through a blend of precise alignment instructions and fluid posture flows, her playful, community-oriented classes inspire the student to discover his or her own potent source of grace, power, and radical freedom. Visit her at http://sapremayoga.blogspot.com (blog) or www.saprema-yoga.com (website)

Nina Shoenthal   I am a lover of life, an artist and a free spirit dedicated to the healing path. I received my first professional training as a deep tissue massage therapist on the luscious island of Kauai in 2001. This was only the beginning of an ever evolving personal and professional life full of practicing, studying and sharing various forms of body-mind healing and movement arts. I have recently expanded my professional practice to include Somatic Expressive Therapy and Yoga Dance. I am completing my clinical hours to be certified as a movement therapist.
I carry a message that the body is our vehicle for transforming pain into peace and stress into freedom, for deepening connection with ourselves and our world. My deepest inspiration comes from the power of the heart and the magic of movement. My wish is for people to feel happy, free, whole and in loving connection with themselves.
Please come join me in shaking our souls and expressing our authentic selves through movement and play! Aloha

Chelsea Hastings first encountered yoga as a teenager and was transformed by the positive power it had to shape perspective and energize the body. While obtaining her degree in Cultural Studies in California, Chelsea trained with Anusara yoga teacher, Robyn Smith. Her own teaching is greatly influenced by Anusara’s therapeutic alignment principles and heart-centered philosophy. Her classes focus on building strength, balance and brightness from the inside out.  In addition to teaching yoga, Chelsea is in the process of gaining her Vermont midwifery license and is a partner in Well Within Midwifery- a homebirth practice serving Central and Northern Vermont. She delights in the company of the families she works with. Other delights are growing, cooking and eating food, dabbling in the Vermont folk life renaissance and dancing. She is deeply grateful to all of her teachers.

Hannah Dube,   Hannah Mariah Dubé, CMT, LYYDT

Hannah, Certified Yoga Dance teacher, has delighted in movement all her life. A practitioner of the healing arts for over 15 years, including yoga and bodywork, she has been a dedicated conscious dancer this whole time, studying with teachers of the 5 Rhythms, Journey Dance, Soul Motion, and Kripalu Yoga Dance . Elements and flavors of these inspiring teachings inevitably weave their way into her classes, along with learnings drawn from diverse sources such as Psychosynthesis, the work of Joanna Macy, Buddhism, shamanism, energy work, and her love of and deep connection with the natural world. She brings to each class her gentle welcoming presence, her enthusiasm for and knowledge of the body and the body-mind connection, her infectious love of dance, as well as her passion for poetic language, guided imagery, and consciousness deepening and expanding perspectives and experiences.

Amy LePage-Hansen explored yoga in the past, but it wasn’t until re-emerging from infant/toddler momma-hood that she realized how important yoga was in her life. Reconnecting with herself, gaining strength on many levels and witnessing how yoga positively affected her life off the mat inspired her to delve deeper and share yoga with others.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abbi Jaffe loves teaching partner yoga at Yoga Mountain. Abbi embodies authenticity and playfulness. Abbi has been creating emotionally and physically safe spaces for exploration and expansion since her days of leading Outward Bound wilderness trips over 10 years ago. Abbi weaves movement community in Vermont and holds space for the Montpelier Contact Improv Community and the annual Burlington International Contact Jam. She co-leads wilderness trips with her company Ready Adventures. After 5 years of practicing Thai Massage, Abbi now studies Body-Mind Centering and Authentic Movement and shares Centering Bodywork. Abbi would love to welcome you to her community retreat space in Underhill called Dharma Door. Please visit her website for more information at dharmadoor.com