teachers

Preshana Yoga founder Ananda Trettin's journey along a yogic path began even before she had reached the cradle - when her mother was blessed by Indian yogis, Sri Swami Satchidananda and Muktananda - the former naming her sisters Shanthi ('peace' in Sanskrit) and Prema ('love'). When Ananda finally came on the scene, the suggestion that she be named for 'happiness' simply seemed the right the thing to do.

Based in the United States, Ananda worked as an international runway model for eight years until she was 24, before a viciously self-destructive downward spiral forced her to recognise the ultimate superficiality of the fashion world and to re-evaluate her direction in life. After meeting her future husband, Jim, she emigrated to Australia, where she elected to pursue the path of the yogi with renewed vigour.

Having trained with a broad array of teachers – including Cyndi Lee, Elena Brower, Erich Shipffman, Mark Whitwell, Tara Judelle, Noah Maze, Christina Sell and John Friend – Ananda founded Preshana in 2008, assembling the name from that of herself and her sisters, although the word itself means 'application of pranic force'. Initially teaching within the framework provided by Anusara (a form of hatha yoga), Ananda was Inspired and nearly became certified before choosing to follow her own path. Her teaching focusses on alignment, building muscular strength as well as supporting students as they strive to more fully open to the deepest longing of their hearts.

Ananda remains highly skeptical of (quote) wacky New Age Bullsh*t (unquote), but is convinced of the effectiveness of yoga in allowing practitioners to discover greater personal freedom and agency within the world, by developing greater self-awareness, self-control and responsibility for the physical form. Since expanding her studio to Darlinghurst in 2012, Ananda has needed all of the above.

When not kicking back with a hard-earned ginger beer, Ananda may usually be found on her yoga mat as she believes that its her first duty as a teacher to practice what you teach.
 

Vicki landed in Sydney from the UK in 2008 looking for a life change. Through yoga, which she started practicing nearly ten years ago, she found it when, in order to advance and deepen her practice she undertook her teacher training through Power Living Australia.

Vicki's journey through yohga has led her in many directions, starting out mainly in Power Yoga, then moving through Jivamukti and Kundalini, Vicki found Anusara in 2010 and was drawn to its combination of heart and strength, of courage and compassion. It was here where she found the crucible of the yoga, and began her journey anew.

Vicki began teaching in 2010 and has since developed a teaching style which fuses strength, passion, humour and compassion. In Vicki's classes you can expect to challenge yourself physically whilst opening your heart to new experiences and emotions, allowing this practice to take you on a journey of discovery of the self. Vicki joined the teaching team at Preshsna Glebe in early 2011 and is delighted to be leading classes in the new space at Darlinghurst.

Vicki's teachers have ranged from Duncan Peak, with who she undertook her initial training, through to Sharon Gannon and David Life, and more recently John Friend, Noah Maze and Tara Judelle. Vicki completed her Anusara immersions and teacher training in 2011 with Tara and Christine De Fresne and Cassandra Mission, all of whom she is grateful for in her journey so far.

Vicki's desire to make the world a better and more equal place fuels both her teaching and life outside the yoga room. She is an avid activist who regularly supports campaigns and movements such as Occupy Sydney, and she can very likely be found at Martin Place when she isn't on the mat.

Vanessa is a highly qualified yoga therapist, bodyworker and educator. She comes from a fantastic mix of yoga styles and had the opportunity to train with leaders in the field of yoga while teaching for Pure Yoga in Hong Kong. She has extensive training and has taught thousands of classes worldwide. Vanessa has been teaching since 2003. She specializes in Family Practice, teaching yoga for fertility, pre and postnatal yoga, mums and bubs classes and enjoys teaching kids and family yoga. Vanessa is a childbirth educator, infant massage and baby yoga instructor and has trained to be a doula.

She is a yoga therapist by trade but likes to rock the hard-core vinyasa as well. Vanessa has been asked to assist and teach numerous yoga teacher trainings with special attention to Women’s Yoga and to Anatomy. Vanessa teaches breath and alignment-centric vinyasa flow as well as soft stability in power.  Not afraid to make some noise, she is a strong teacher with a strong voice. Vanessa is nurturing but not always easy. Her classes can be both strong with a commitment toward softening and restorative with a bend toward the uneasy. She challenges you to face yourself both on and off the yoga or shiatsu mat.

Vanessa has extensive bodywork training and holds a Diploma in Shiatsu and Oriental Therapies. As well, she has intensively studied Thai Massage both in Thailand and during her graduate studies of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chicago. She also practices Craniosacral Therapy.  Originally from Texas, this little mexican margarita likes expansive skies, good mexican beer and men who open doors for her when she can remember to let them.

**We're excited to offer Vanessa's bodywork services at Preshana Yoga.  Please go to our timetable page, then click the 'MASSAGE' tab to make a booking**

Holly has had a lifelong interest in learning and teaching movement. A passion for dance that was ignited 30 years ago led her to study an array of performing arts, fitness techniques and complimentary health modalities that has taken her travelling, teaching and performing around the world.

In the past decade Holly has completed teacher trainings in various styles of dance, Yoga, Pilates and Gyrotonics and Antigravity Fitness. In 2002 she graduated from Yoga Arts comprehensive 1000hr training program, including study in Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa and therapeutic styles of Yoga as well as extensive study in Yoga Philosophy and Ayurveda.

She went on to study and teach for several years in New York and London with many renowned Yoga teachers. In 2005 she joined Tripsichore Yoga Dance Theatre with whom she became faculty on the U.S. Yoga Journal conference circuit. She has had the opportunity to teach a wide range of people from professional dancers, actors and athletes to people with disabilities, pregnant women and incarcerated teens.

Her skills extend to health-related field including nutrition, massage and kinesiology. She is certified as a Holistic Health Counsellor, BodyTalk practitioner and First Aid/CPR Instructor.

With an approach that integrates the wisdom of a variety of modalities, Holly specialises in bringing awareness and balance to the body as a whole. She encourages people to move in a way that is safe, intelligent and enjoyable and to live in a way that enhances their overall health.
 

There isn't really a starting point or a set stepping stone that delivered me to my mat or to my practice. Credit for the match-making isn't painted onto one single life moment - I think I was always going to end up here really, if not through a chosen path, through default. You see, I've always been searching and I had already looked everywhere else.

Searching for fullness and happiness and searching for the good, but all too often, in the wrong places - I'd checked all the other spots,  checked into relationships, friendships and work. My fullness wasn't there. I checked into partying and checked into checking out but that didn't get me there either. Last place left unchecked, was myself and of course, there they were buried -  all the keys to all those qualities I had been searching for were right there, sitting within myself. Yoga definitely unlocked that knowing for me.

My yoga practice gave me the space to just be with myself, to just gear down and slow down and quite down and just move my body. It gave me the space to find the ease and the brilliance and the good within myself. Yoga opened the opportunity to learn to accept, to let go, and ultimately, to learn how to just be. The experience of deep release, the blast of a clean re-set, and the lingering taste of priceless elation instantly had me hooked. 

It only took that first 60 minutes on my mat to sway my heart into knowing that I wanted to teach, that all I wanted, was to help other people find that same comfort, that same strength, that same knowing that each one of us is in control of our own experience, of our own destiny.

I wanted to teach to help others find their own softness, their own strength;  to remind people that the search wasn't about uncovering some magical tool or experience outside yourself to unlock your happiness, but rather about going in to find it.

Each of us  are our own magic keys to our deepest of dreams. We each create our own destiny and experience and manifestations. Each one of us creates our own life. Each one of us, drivin' our own car to our dreamy of dreamiest destinations.  So, I'd like my classes to serve as offerings and reminders that you can be happy and feel full and satisfied, and light. I'd like my classes to be gems of shiny challenges and pearls of deep breathing and dramatic transformation. I'd like to help students find ease and expansion, and one million expectation-explosions. 

I want to help trigger transformation. 

I want to help illuminate and brighten and I want to help people remember. 

My 200 hour teacher training completed in 2005 was flavoured with Jivamukti, Power, Yin and Anusara principles and since then I've gone on to complete Baron Baptiste's Level 1 teacher training, an Anusara Teacher Training, as well as Immersions 1, 2 and 3. Additionally, I hold a BSC with a major in Biology, I've studied with Noah Maze, Tara Judele, Julie Smeardon, Marc St Pierre, and Betsey Downing. Consequently, my classes tend to be more of a Kelli special - strong and sweet, challenging and softening, bursting with heart and burning with love rather than a straight up Anusara, Power, or Hatha class.

I hope that you'll come check it ouuuuuuuuuuut!!!!!

Roshini has been practicing yoga for the last 6 years. Her journey into yoga began while she was living in Ireland and realised her love for health and fitness had to move indoors. She first practiced Bikram Yoga for 3 years. She enjoyed the physical challenge and discipline this gave her as a practice, but after time started to search and ask for more. Whilst practicing different styles of yoga she stepped into a Anusara class with her teacher and friend Tahnee Fouriner. She loved the beautiful way the class flowed and the heart-felt theme that sang with her on the inside. Listening to her inner song and pulsation, she decided to take a detour to Bali on her way home to do a 200 hour Teacher Training with certified Anusara teacher, Bridget Woods Kramer.  Roshini embraces the practice of yoga in her everyday life. She believes in living a life of fullness, joy, fun, compassion, truth and love. 

Roshini teaches from her heart and brings a generous warm presence to the room. She teaches a Hatha flow class with clear alignment and a light-hearted attitude that brings  more length into your body, patience to your mind and clarity to your heart. Rosh continues to keep filling up her spiritual path and teachings by attending regular classes, workshops and teacher trainings.

Felicity came to yoga via music. Riddled with RSI and bodily stagnation, she desperately wanted to inhabit her back-body: to use her whole form rather than continuing to hone in on micro-perfections. She found Ananda's little studio in Glebe, back when it was called The Yoga Movement and began a regular practice. In those early days the school was small so she made sure to bring a friend to every class to build community and share the joy of embodiment. Felicity participated in several Anusara immersions and workshops with teachers including Tara Judelle, Ross Rayburn, Christine du Fresne and Betsey Downing. She has studied teacher training with Noah Mazé and Christina Sell.

Felicity is a professional musician. She's studied early and modern music at Sydney Conservatorium, done a masters in shakuhachi (Japanese Zen flute) and is now completing a PhD about taiko in Australia. Felicity has sung all her life, making several recordings and touring the world as a chorister. She has taught music and musicianship to thousands of children in Brisbane and Sydney. Felicity is president of the Australian Shakuhachi Society.

When she's not on the mat, you might find Felicity throwing herself at giant Japanese drums; practising Japanese demon-sword-dances; hanging from the ceilings at aerial circus training; developing core strength and grace on the pole; in musical breath meditation; teaching flutes, singing or violin. Felicity also works for an independent street-press magazine called RealTime that focuses on the hybridisation of art forms in our contemporary Australian art scene. It covers dance, theatre, performance, music, visual and digital arts, film and arts issues.

What does this have to do with yoga? Everything! There is yoga in all of these activities and all of these practices inform Felicity's yoga, heightening awareness and deepening presence.

Here's some cross-over wisdom from shakuhachi: cultivate beginner's mind. Beginners, like children, do not scrutinise their actions too closely during the process of doing. They simply do and feel because there is enough to focus on there, saving judgement for later. As we become more familiar with our actions, we judge more closely our perceived successes and failures and this has the potential to inhibit our growth. So in all things, let go enough to get fully involved.
 

Linzee has a slight addiction to traveling to new places, exploring new languages, and immersing herself in other cultures. To her there is nothing better then traveling the world, sharing her passion for yoga, meeting new people and diving into to new paths that the world creates for her.

Growing up as a dancer she had a strong passion for movement, and was obsessed with advancing and pushing herself as much and as far as she could go. Whenshe was introduced to Yoga it quickly acted like a drug and she became a devoted student. She treasured being in class, tuning out the outside world and embracing the flow. She found herself captivated with this new journey.

Linzee remembers the day that she decided to take her practice further; she wanted to learn more and set forth on her path. She wanted to be able to pass on her knowledge and her love for yoga to others everywhere. She took off to India and this is where she studied yoga as a science, a way of life and absorbed as much as she possibly could. She has now been teaching for the past five years and loving every minute of it.

As a teacher her goal is to bring awareness and self-discovery into peoples lives. She wishes to help you discover a better understanding of your body, by exploring new ways to move and breath. I teach to learn, share and create in a light, fun, and
playful atmosphere.

She believes that yoga allows people to be their own healer and to see their own beauty. Yoga helps us to transform because it calls for self-observation and as soon as you observe something it begins to unravel and begins to change. The purpose of yoga is to help each one of us achieve our highest potential and to experience enduring health and happiness and at the same time improve the quality of our lives. The right means are just as important as the end in view.

Linzee believes that the practice of yoga isn't about 'getting it', achieving or striving to be something. It's about playing, learning, exploring and discovering our potential. She loves getting students excited about the journey and discovering their
own path.

~In the right view both of life and of yoga, all life is either consciously or subconsciously a yoga ~Sri Aurobindo

Originally from the UK, Alison made Sydney her home in 2000. Since arriving in Sydney her life has been turned upside down and inside out. Yoga has supported and inspired Alison through the joy and pain of her transitions. She is committed to the continuous exploration of herself through yoga. "Every day I forget that I am divine and yoga helps me to remember!"

Alison has been teaching Yoga for 7 years. Using her knowledge of alignment and breath as a base, Alison will move you through a sequence of poses designed to decongest your body and open you to your fullest potential. She will inspire and challenge you to develop a deeper level of awareness. For those who are new to the practice, Alison tailors the experience, facilitating bus stops to allow you to stay for a while. Experienced students have the opportunity to find new ways of being and go further than they would have imagined.

Alison's teaching journey started with Bikram Yoga, which gave her focus. Baron Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga and Power Living Yoga taught Alison how to move gracefully with her breath and at the same time become a badass teacher! Anasara training, then more recently Hatha and Iyengar has given Alison greater discipline, further developed her awareness and taken her to places that she has never been before.

I acknowledge with gratitude the inspiration of my teachers: Bikram Choudhury, Baron Baptiste, Duncan Peak, Marc St Pierre, Patrick Montgomery, Tara Judelle, Noah Maze, Christina Sell, Darren Rhodes, Caroline Coggins, Stephanie Quirk.....plus many more. My wonderful students who teach me so much and my beautiful children who show me how to love unconditionally. For all of you, I am truly grateful! x