Michelle Ryan

Michelle started yoga 22 years ago, but didn't find Ashtanga Yoga until after the birth of her third child, in 1997. She met Beryl Bender Birch in 2001, and completed her first teacher training with her. In 2006, she began studying traditional Ashtanga Yoga with Nancy Gilgoff, one of the first Western students of Ashtanga master Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Michelle had the great fortune to meet Sri K. Pattabhi Jois during his last teaching visit to the US in 2007. She studies with Nancy and Beryl every year, as well as authorized Ashtanga teacher Christine Hoar. She also completed Primary Series teacher training with Tim Miller in the Spring of 2014; combined, she has over 600 hours of Ashtanga Yoga training with some of the most experienced Ashtanga teachers in the world. In over a decade of teaching Ashtanga, Michelle has developed a teaching style that is lighthearted, compassionate and generous. She is also an avid student of Sanskrit and Yoga Philosophy and shares those passions in her teaching as well. Michelle opened Florence Yoga in late 2009 and taught traditional Ashtanga there for 5 years, before moving her yoga community to downtown Northampton in the Fall of 2014, with the opening of Ashtanga Yoga Northampton, one of only two traditional Mysore style Ashtanga yoga shalas in Western Massachusetts.