Cocco Yoga

I took my first yoga class in 1993. Needless to say, I wasn’t hooked. I didn’t even like my first class, an alleged intro class full of pretzel-twisting poses that were way beyond me. I soon found other classes I loved, and did yoga off and on (more off) until 2002, when I began a regular practice. In 2003 I completed my 200hr teacher training. I’ll admit, I didn’t see myself as a yoga teacher at all, but I walked into a job in spite of myself (in January 2004) and I’ve been happily teaching ever since.

My training began as an undergrad at UC Berkeley in courses on nutrition, phys ed, and the psychology of human movement. I finished my bachelors at Barnard, where I concentrated on religion coursework, including Bob Thurman’s Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. I later did graduate work in South Asian Studies, also at Columbia University, and finished my masters there in Health and Behavior Studies/Health Education.

I completed my 200hr yoga teacher training at Integral Yoga New York and my 500hr training at ISHTA Yoga with Alan Finger. Over the years, I’ve also studied with Genny Kapuler, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Jon Kabat-Zinn (meditation/Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), Leslie Kaminoff, and with various teachers at the New York Shambhala Center (Tantric/Buddhist meditation) and Insight Meditation (Vipassana meditation).

My philosophy for teaching? I want you to come in, leave your life (good and bad) outside, work hard, meet your body, relax, find your breath, and have fun. How do I encourage this as a teacher? I don’t know. Teaching is extremely intuitive. I take as many classes as I can, absorb what I do and don’t like, and try to pass this on.

I want people to get into their bodies and be honest with themselves. We neglect and abuse ourselves constantly, and we numb ourselves to life. Yoga can reverse this habit, and it isn’t all relaxation, or love and light, because often we open to the pain we’ve been taught all our lives to avoid. Better to be real and move through the pain (and the joy), than to be rigid and constantly defensive, or bubbly and fake. Or anxious. Or depressed. I’ve found that coming into the body is a remarkable way to do this.