Yoga with Gillian on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10AM 

Gillian has been practicing Yoga since 1998 and teaching since 2014. She spent a solid 16 years focusing on her own personal practice before attempting to bring her understanding of yoga to students. This maturity shows in her teaching style.  

Gillian approaches yoga as a form of physical therapy and mental centering. As a child, she developed tendonitis in both her knees and hips from dance. These injuries prevented her from being able to do vigorous athletic activities without pain for many years.

In her early twenties, she discovered Iyengar-style yoga at the 92ndStreet Y in New York City, taking classes with Michael Gilbert (now Dr.Oz’s yoga expert). She discovered that with regular practice strengthening herbody and stabilizing her joints, she was able to enjoy hiking, skiing anddancing again.

She strives to pass this wisdom on to her students, using props and hands-on adjustments to encourage optimal physical engagement.   She believes that helping and healing her students is a rewarding enhancement to her own practice. As a perpetual student, Gillian both teaches and learns from her students.  

Promoting the use of the body as meditation, Gillian uses breathwork and physical challenge to help move herself and her students deeper into their own strength and consciousness. Blending Iyengar, Forrest and Prana Vinyasa Flow styles, her engaging, funclasses teach awareness and demand focus.  

Gillian’s teaching style is direct, yet soft. Her mantra is: “it is my job to keep you safe and it is your job to help me”. She is serious about assisting her students in achieving their full potential and her lengthy personal practice has given her an eye for precise alignment. Yet because of the limitations and injuries she has dealt with in her own body, she respects where each person is and never pushes beyond a student’s boundaries.

Gillian fell in love with her early exposure to Iyengar Yoga. Since that time, she has trained in Prenatal Yoga with Heather Lee Farrell and Petra Ledkovsky; Shiva Reinhardt in Prana Vinyasa Flow; Christina Sell; students of Ana Forrest and many other instructors around the country. Gillian has two young children and is involved in her community, teaching elementary-aged students Mindfulness and Breathwork. She is a 200RYT, on the training staff at Blue Lotus Yoga in Ruidoso and is currently working on her 500 hour teacher certification.