about

Ash (she/her) began her yoga teaching journey at Practice Yoga in Austin, TX in 2016 and completed an additional 300-hour training at Yess Yoga in Minneapolis in 2024. Practicing yoga has helped her cope with depression and anxiety throughout her adult life as well as healing her relationship with her body. Through yoga, she finds joy in movement and in rest.

Ash feels called to teach yoga to others in order to guide them to the peace, mindfulness, and self-acceptance she has found through her own practice. She is especially interested in how asana and meditation practices allow people to care for themselves so that they can better care for each other and our world. 

Ash believes in creating inclusive environments where all people can experience the benefits of these practices while also honoring the South Asian roots of yoga by teaching more than asana in her classes. While corporate yoga companies and some studios traffic images of yoga that privilege thin, white, flexible, and able bodies, this does not reflect the reality or history of the practice. Ash believes that this exclusive and damaging image of yoga, and the systems that support it, need to be dismantled.

Yoga practitioners come from every background, shape, size, and ability level, and everyone who wants them deserves access to these healing practices.

Ash is always a student as well as a teacher. She has continued to study a variety of yoga styles since receiving her original teacher training certification. In 2019, she attended Relax & Renew Restorative Yoga training with Judith Lasater at Kripalu. She also assisted Judith Lasater at a Restorative training in 2021 in Laguna Niguel, California. She loves teaching Restorative Yoga because it helps people learn to take time for deep rest and nervous system regulation- something desperately needed in our contemporary moment.

She is also a certified Accessible Yoga instructor through a training with Jivana Heyman and Kelley Palmer in February 2020 at Sacred Chill West in Atlanta. She studied experiential anatomy online with Judith Lasater and Mary Richards. In 2024, she received a trauma-informed yoga teaching certificate through Firefly Yoga. She is an E-RYT 200, RYT 500, and YACEP certified yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance.

Learn more about Ash’s writing, art, editing, and other work at ashtheissen.com.