Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.

– BKS Iyengar, Light on Life

YCSC Instructors

All of our instructors are steeped in the methodology and philosophy of Iyengar style hatha yoga and have many years of teaching experience and yoga practice. Several of our instructors have earned teaching certificates from the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Fransisco, which is accredited through the state of California. Some have studied in India directly with Geeta and Prashant Iyengar, son and daughter of BKS Iyengar.

We are pleased to offer classes and workshops with Kofi Busia. He is one of a handful of instructors in the world who were given a senior yoga teaching certificate directly by BKS Iyengar. He studied and practiced with Guruji on numerous occasions in India many years ago, when classes were very small and intimate.

Additionally, a few instructors bring in other influences of their training into their teaching such as kinesiology, flow, etc. Please consult the individual instructor bios for more complete descriptions of background and education.

Abbey Asher

Abbey is a formally trained ballet and jazz dancer who performed professionally in Santa Barbara. She began studying Iyengar yoga in 1995 and completed teacher training in 2004. Abbey has been a student of Maya Lev and Kofi Busia for many years and is currently teaching yoga at UCSC. In January of 2008, Abbey studied for one month at the Iyengar Institute in Pune, India.

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Alice Kennedy

Known for her light-hearted playful approach, Alice’s classes bring a sense of fun and community to the practice of yoga. Grounded in a strong heart-body foundation, her students are surprised at how they begin to safely expand their practice, leading to more beauty and confidence on and off their mats.

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Kofi Busia

Kofi is one of the few teachers awarded a senior certificate by Mr. Iyengar. He has studied with BKS Iyengar many times in India and has been teaching yoga for over 35 years. He is also a scholar of Sanskrit and has translated the Sutras of Patanjali from the original.

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Maya Lev

Maya Lev is the Director and owner of Yoga Center Santa Cruz. Maya's love of yoga was initiated by her first teacher, Sarah Pepper, when she was a freshman at UCSC. She subsequently became a student of Ruth Hille, a founder of Yoga Center Santa Cruz, who encouraged her to consider teaching yoga. Maya attended the teacher training program at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco and began teaching in 1993. She is profoundly grateful to Kofi Busia, her primary teacher for the past 22 years, for inspiration, guidance, and insight into the subtle mechanisms of the asanas and their effect on the body. In her teaching, she combines a rigorous physical practice with a deep reverence for the spiritual transformation yoga offers to each student.

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Stephen Graves

Stephen first encountered yoga in 2007, when he was still a teenager. Ever since discovering Iyengar yoga in 2012, he has embraced it as a lifelong practice, drawn to the discipline’s focus on precise alignment and mindful awareness. Stephen completed his teacher training at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Amsterdam between 2017 and 2020, earning his Level 1 certification in 2021. In 2023, he deepened his studies with a stay at RIMYI in Pune, under the guidance of the Iyengar family.

Beyond yoga, Stephen is also a filmmaker, and PhD student in the Film and Digital Media program at UC Santa Cruz. His dual life as both an artist-academic and yogi informs his unique teaching style, blending intellectual curiosity with an embodied, experiential approach to learning. His classes focus on cultivating self-awareness, strength, and stillness, creating a thoughtful and supportive space for students to explore the transformative power of Iyengar yoga.

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Lori Ritland

Lori L. Ritland, Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher, CIYT, Certified Yoga Therapist C-IAYT, and an E-RYT 500. With over twenty years of intense, study, practice, and teaching, I am dedicated to spreading the teaching and love of yoga as taught by world renown B.K.S. Iyengar (1918-2014) from Pune, India. I have studied with Guruji, the Iyengar Family in both India and the U.S. I continue to study with teachers all over the world to further the knowledge I bring to both my practice and teaching.

After twenty-five years in the DC area, I now live in Santa Cruz California with my family, where I continue to spread the light of B.K.S. Iyengar.

Valerie Moselle

Valerie Moselle is an advanced yoga and breathwork teacher, author, and entrepreneur. A 25-year veteran of teaching, her approach is informed by functional anatomy, biomechanics, and emerging theories in neuroscience. Valerie is the founder of ReSourcing™, a system of simple, accessible, movement, breathing, and visualization techniques based on evidence and best practices to regulate the nervous system and promote mind-body integration.

ReSourcing™ Yoga Classes are a playful blend of yoga inspired movement and breathing exercises, and somatic awareness techniques that promote mind-body integration and nervous system regulation. Inspired by insights from the fields of psychology, neurobiology and mindfulness. ReSourcing™ classes address stress and chronic burnout, build physical strength, improve motor control, germinate new, positive neural pathways