INSTRUCTOR BIOS
TRACY BRENNAN
Tracy is the Owner/Director of both Claremont Yoga and the CY Teacher Training Program. She feels blessed to have found yoga and mindfulness during a transition from corporate marketing in the software industry in 2001. Yoga helped her manage the stress of leaving a career and finding a new path of teaching and sharing the joy of yoga. Tracy has been a Certified Iyengar Yoga Instructor since 2005 and continues to study with Senior Iyengar Teachers. Tracy loves having a family, begin part of the yoga community and exploring the world.
Bess Marshall
Bess is an athlete who found the healing benefits of yoga to heal after a biking accident. She is a compassionate and inspiring teacher who leads a mindful flow. She loves the outdoors and enjoys teaching on the roof deck under the stars. Bess is a Physical Therapist and infuses her classes with alignment and functional movement for a healthy back.
SARAH LITTLE
Sarah Little is a joyful teacher of yoga, mindfulness and meditation. She seeks understanding and humor from everyday experiences of living. Sarah’s own practice of yoga and meditation intensified after becoming a parent and experiencing postpartum depression. Sarah’s classes are peppered with anatomy facts, exploration of inner spaces, poetry, breath work, imagination and laughter. She uses her strong understanding of the human body and correct alignment to challenger her students to find greater freedom. Sarah teaches Vinyasa Flow, Gentle, Hatha, Restorative and Kundalini yoga and practices massage and Reiki. She is registered with Yoga Alliance as an eRYT200. Sarah believes that our lives are experienced through our bodies and the body is a tool for understanding our hearts and minds. Yoga and meditation practices can lead to a more graceful and balanced life. Sarah is also an instructor in the CYTT program.
Diane Flowers
Presence not presents, now not then, here not there - that’s Diane’s definition of Yoga. Diane has practiced yoga for 15+ years, deepening her practice in the last several years to include all of the 8 limbs of yoga. Asana (the physical practice) is no longer the center of her practice where breath and meditation have become more central to her practice. Diane started teaching 5 years ago, after completing her 200hr yoga teacher training with Monica Matthews. She has continued her training with Soul of Yoga in Encinitas, CA with focus on therapeutic aspects of yoga, completing her 500hr certification and currently working on completing her yoga therapy certification sometime in the next 12 months. Diane’s style of teaching is gentle trauma-informed with options cued to help each person explore and create their own experience. Her classes are breath focused and finding alignment in your body not in the pose.
JENNA MANN
Jenna Mann (RYT-200) came to the practice of yoga after the death of a dear friend. She found that the focus on mindfulness and breath practice offered a strategy to deal with sorrow and anxiety. As she continued in the practice, she grew to love the rhythmic, steady matching of breath to movement offered in yoga and especially grew to love the Vinyasa Flow style. She found that yoga uniquely offered a holistic process to engage the mind, body, and spirit. It is this balanced, energizing approach of strengthening and empowering the whole person that Jenna endeavors to share in her yoga classes.
Brie Ochoa
Brie has always had a love for exercise and self wellness. She entered her first triathlon at the age of 9 and from there she just kept going. She’s taught group exercise classes in aqua, spinning, and weight training. She also regularly participates in 5k and 10k runs with her personal training clients. But, it wasn’t until 2015 that yoga entered her life. The sense of community and inclusion was just what she was looking for. In 2017 she completed Monica Matthews 200hr YTT. Wanting to continue her education she applied for and graduated from Rene Quenell's Para Yoga 300hr YTT in 2021. Brie brings energy, compassion, and modifications to every class whether she’s teacher or student.
JOANNA LORD
Joanna was first introduced to yoga through dance more than fifteen years ago, but it was not until joining the Claremont Yoga community that her practice transformed. Yoga has since become a vehicle for navigating life and practicing peace. Yoga brings balance, strength, connectedness and joy to her life; qualities that she is now sharing with others through her teaching. You can expect a blend of vinyasa, alignment-based yoga, and playful movement in her classes, along with playlists curated with love. Joanna is excited to continue to learn, evolve, and share the joy, physical and mental benefits of yoga, and believes that yoga is for everyone!
Elizabeth Morgan
Elizabeth Morgan, E-RYT 500, has been practicing yoga for over two decades and teaching professionally since 2010. Her specialty is the Vinyasa Flow practice, but she also enjoys teaching Hatha and Gentle classes. She loves sharing the practice with others and helping people discover yoga’s many physical and personal benefits including improved strength, flexibility, confidence, and adaptability. Her teaching style is direct and precise, focusing on physical alignment and discrete anatomical cues that help students advance through the many expressions of each pose. She endeavors to bring elements of fun and challenge to every class she teaches. She believes that yoga is a practice that evolves with us, both physically and psychologically, throughout our lives and serves us in unexpected and delightful ways. She invites you to join her for uplifting, request-focused practices designed around your particular needs.
Monica Mathews
Monica Mathews is a registered E-RYT 500 and YACEP for continuing education with Yoga Alliance. Monica completed her 200 hour teacher training with Yoga Works. She obtained her Myofascial Release certification with Erik Dalton. Monica also teaches soft foam roller rehabilitation and Yin yoga classes. She taught step and yoga for 10 years at the University of LaVerne. Her specialty is Senior Yoga and teaching students body awareness to recognize their imbalances and repetitive movement patterns and work towards symmetry and alignment in the postures. Her Vinyasa Flow level 1-2 classes are full of fun choreography and combinations along with music to motivate and make you smile. Visit her website: monicamathewsyoga.com for her Book and DVD.
Sarah Sawyer
Growing up, much of my life centered around sports and competition: gymnastics, dance, collegiate cheerleading, running, and weight training. After college, my sports activities had ended, and I began searching for a new venture where I could focus my interests, hoping to sustain my strength and flexibility. I took a studio yoga class in 2005 and found yoga to be more than an activity but a life-long passion that has provided support through life’s struggles and successes. Sarah is a E-RYT 200-hour and RYT 500-hour yoga instructor registered with Yoga Alliance. She is trained in vinyasa, yin, prenatal and aerial yoga, and is a Yoga Alliance Certified Education Provider. Over a span of 16 years, I have explored various yoga traditions (Iyengar, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Power, Fertility, Prenatal, Yin, Restorative, and Kundalini) and have discovered that yoga can benefit anyone at any time in life. My perspective is there is a yoga style uniquely suited for each individual, and as one’s life evolves so may one’s preferred and needed yoga style. Each day of your life can be fed, guided, healed or driven by a different type of yoga, and that is one of its beauties. My yoga practice has changed my life profoundly, and I want to support you through your own personal yoga journey. I hope to see you in a class soon! Namaste.
Michelle Dowd
"Yoga is a powerful vehicle for change. As you build strength, you start to believe in your own potential." --T. Cruikshank Michelle is a certified yoga teacher and creative writing professor who believes in the power of art to liberate our minds, bodies and spirits. In her classes, she works to creatively engage your imagination and energize you to cultivate a deeply personal and fiercely authentic practice. She is honored to participate in a community of yogis who share her love of learning, joy in movement and the perpetual desire to energetically balance a full life with a measure of grace. Michelle is also an instructor in the CYTT program.
Genevieve Gatney
Genevieve began practicing yoga at the age of 5 with her father. Today her practice has helped her to recover after injury, manage anxiety and daily stress and to be present in each moment as a mother and partner. She completed the 200 hour teacher training program at Claremont Yoga in 2020 and will always be a student of the practice. She thanks daily yoga for a sense of grounding and community. It is this sense of community and self discovery that she strives to bring to each class.
Sonia Shaeri
Sonia is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher and has been teaching in the Los Angeles area since 2004. Her path of yoga has led her to India to learn directly from BKS Iyengar and his family and to many conventions and workshops in the US and abroad with senior teachers. What drew Sonia to yoga at first was a deep interest in Eastern philosophy and mysticism. What keeps her deeply rooted to the Iyengar lineage is its systematic approach to life-long learning which provides the tools to explore the depths of consciousness within the clear and practical confines of a physical practice. Sonia strives to teach with calm and clarity, challenging students while creating a supportive and safe environment that is conducive to learning and building community. She infuses her teachings with humor, sharing wisdom and joy of the transformative practice of yoga.
Patty Wildasinn
Kundalini yoga is known as the yoga of awareness. Kundalini yoga consists of techniques that can be practiced by anyone, regardless of age or physical ability. It meets you where you are. A complete system, Kundalini yoga includes posture, breath, mental focus, mantra, meditation and deep relaxation. Meditation is an integral part of the practice. Its effect is structural alignment, a strong nervous system, and abalanced glandular system. The experience of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation is calming, energizing, elevating, and expansive. A regular practice promotes health and a profound sense of well-being.
MARCELLA JACOBS
Marcella (She/Her) is a certified yoga instructor with over 500 hours of training and has been practicing yoga for more than a decade. Since completing her 200-hour training in Brooklyn, NY in 2017 she has taught a variety of classes in the Greater Los Angeles Area including Vinyasa, Yin, Hatha, and Meditation. You can expect a modern take on Ashtanga Vinyasa in Marcella's class, with creative sequencing and a carefully curated playlist. Her intention as a teacher is to create a safe, welcoming, music-filled space for students to connect with breath, body, and community. She encourages all students to approach their practice with a sense of curiosity, allowing space for each person to explore their specific needs at that moment. Marcella’s classes are playful, challenging, and meditative with a strong focus on the breath.
Tamar Baker
Tamar grew up in El Sereno (Los Angeles) and is a lover of yoga. She see’s herself as a forever student and completed a 200 hr YTT in 2019. “Yoga is a road I take to meet myself where I am, on and off the mat. It has helped me to be mindful in my daily experience and to be intentional with my movements as I approach life's ups and downs. I am learning the value of breathing on purpose and the power and peace it can provide me with when I am at my edge, wether that edge is an asana on my mat or a challenge in my day.”
My goal as an instructor, is to help students discover, nurture and celebrate their strength, flexibility and balance on the mat so that these may find their way into their daily lives. We explore and discover ourselves through our practice. My goal is to guide you through your physical practice to your whole self; mind, body and soul”