Teachers

Aly Long
Yoga Instructor
Aly Long loves yoga! She discovered yoga in college and her practice grew over the years studying both Hatha and Anusara yoga. Aly was called to teach after spending several months in India and Southeast Asia. This clarity came after meeting her Guru Amma(Amritanadamayi). Amma continues to be a strong presence in her life, practice and her teaching!
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Anne Laderman
Yoga Instructor
Anne is a certified instructor who has taught yoga in California, Arizona, New Zealand and her current home of Olympia, WA. Anne has studied with many master teachers and is especially grateful for her time with Ana Forrest, Saul David Raye and Vivian & Aeryk at the Bandha Room.
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Annette McQueen
Yoga Instructor
Annette’s formal yoga training began at the White Lotus Foundation, in Santa Barbara, California, with Ganga White. Inspiration and passion fuel this instructor as she authentically shares her 25+ years of knowledge with yoga students as she guides them through pranayama, meditation, movement and sound.
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Arisa Nogler
Yoga Instructor
Arisa has been practicing yoga for over a decade. She was first attracted to yoga as a form of exercise, but after years of avid practice she became more compelled by the simple magic of linking breath to movement.
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Blu
Yoga Instructor
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Carissa Shaul
Yoga Instructor
Carissa discovered yoga while on a search for inner healing in 2012. The mat was the place where she began to befriend her body and discover comfort in silence. After 2 years of intensive self-development and growth, Carissa knew she wanted to help others to heal as well.
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Chelsea Le Brun Gustafson
Yoga Instructor
Chelsea is a registered yoga teacher (RYT), a biochemist and enthusiastic student of life. She believes that yoga can be used as an integrative practice to explore one’s own body, mind and their responses to life experiences.
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Chelsea Rosen
Yoga Instructor
Growing up aa a competitive dancer, it was an injury that brought Chelsea to her first yoga class at the age of 16. When she discovered that yoga was more than just poses, she was hooked. Through her personal practice, Chelsea has found healing of body, mind, and spirit, and she decided she wanted to be able to share that with others.More about Chelsea

Christina Lagdameo
Yoga Instructor
Various losses in Christina’s life brought her back over and over again to the practices and teachings in meditation and yoga. The words of the young Buddha in Hermann Hesses’s Siddharta resonated deeply with her, “[God] has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself.”
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Connie Patnode
Yoga Instructor
Connie has been a Massage Therapist since 1993 and found Yoga around the same time, like many massage therapists-who-turn-yogi in Olympia. Connie has a holistic approach to health and well being. “What I have found from my own experience is that by connecting with one’s body and breath you can heal the mind and rehabilitate the body. The body is our journal of experiences.”
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Courtney Lyon
Yoga Instructor
Courtney teaches 8am Flow on Saturdays. More to come on Courtney’s bio.

Dave Hutton
Yoga Instructor
Dave has been involved with martial arts, sports and athletics his whole life. Throughout High School and College he was a competitive Fencer and after college he was a serious runner. Due to a severe back injury incurred playing sports back in 2000, Dave needed to find a physical, yet therapeutic and healing workout without incurring more stress to his body.
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Fabiano Acosta
Yoga Instructor
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Ellie Lucas
Yoga Instructor
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Holly Anderson
Yoga Instructor
Holly Anderson is a graduate of the first True Self Yoga Teacher Training and is now a RYT-200. She first came to the practice at a young age, but it was not until pain and illness struck her body and began to affect her daily life, that she really pursued yoga more seriously.
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She found that yoga began to provide balance and healing of the body and mind that she was struggling to find in other arenas and slowly began to commit to a more regular practice of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. It was not until her first visit to magical India, however, that she truly saw and felt the ways in which the practice would forever shift her life towards true health and happiness. This new path soon lead her to Olympia and to the wonderful community here at True Self, where she began to bring a more daily practice into her life and felt the draw to share that practice with others.
Her main passions for teaching yoga are to help others to find a place of calm and balance that they can come to within their daily lives and to bring the practice to those who might otherwise feel that yoga is inaccessible to them for any reason.

Jade Land
Yoga Instructor
Jade’s Bio Coming Soon

Jean Cho
Yoga Instructor
Jean has been teaching Bikram and Hot Yoga for over 15 years. Before that, for many years she taught aerobic classes at various YMCAs throughout New York. As a lifelong athlete, Jean started to experience the effects of years of high impact stress on her body.
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Kehle Potegal
Yoga Instructor
Kehle was drawn to the physical advantages of yoga in 2009, but it wasn’t until much later that she began appreciating and integrating the emotional and mental benefits into her daily life. As a stay-at-home mom with a dream of becoming a yoga teacher, she pursued her 200-hour RYT at True Self Yoga, complimented by an apprenticeship with Christina Lagdameo.
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Kelli Mae Willis
Yoga Instructor
Kelli Mae is a certified teacher of yoga, AcroYoga, CircusYoga, Children’s Yoga, Prenatal Yoga, Meditation and Mindfulness, and Waldorf education. She coordinates our Kids and Family Yoga program and leads Children’s Yoga Teacher Training weekends at True Self. Kelli Mae brings her dynamic, playful teaching style to all of her classes, for children and adults alike!

Kristi Lyons
Yoga Instructor
More about Kristi
Kristi upholds the truth that yoga is a life practice which includes self-study, social justice, inclusivity, environmentalism, and uplifting the voices of lineage holders in the yoga tradition. She offers the gift of humanness as she walks alongside of her community as a loving witness with compassion, and a big open-heart.
Kristi completed her last 300 hour teacher training in 2019 with yoga therapist and author, Sarahjoy Marsh, who has inspired Kristi to take on one-on-one clients for healing through mindfulness and restorative Ayurvedic practices.

Laura Deaton
Yoga Instructor
Laura first came to the mat for a good workout, what happened was far more beautiful then she could ever have imagined. Linking breath with movement became a peaceful dance for her, a journey with herself, a wonderful way to discover to her truth. This has proven to be hugely healing, and a wonderful way to navigate through life’s ups and downs. Laura has always felt drawn to be nurturing and show others she cares, whether this is with a smile, a hug, or a body positive message in class, she strives to touch many lives with smiles, love and laughter. Laura is a graduate of True Self’s RYT-200 followed with an apprenticeship under Vajra Romero. More about Laura

Leah Cleveland
Yoga Instructor
Leah is a graduate of True Self’s first 200 hr teacher training. She has practiced yoga for many years, but not until after college and stepping out of her 20s did her practice become a journey of the self. She believes you never regret arriving to your mat, taking the time to mindfully move and breathe with awareness.More about Leah

PJ Ramstack
Yoga Instructor
PJ was introduced to yoga on a camping trip in the Adirondacks in the summer of 2002. Somewhere there’s a picture of the most awkward, stiff tree you could ever imagine; still he was hooked.
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Rebecca Steiner
Yoga Instructor
Rebecca is originally from New Jersey and has been on the West Coast for over ten years. She has a background in Education, Science and Art. After many years of dental assisting, she found particular appeal in the rejuvenating and healing qualities of heated yoga, for both body and mind.
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Vajra Romano
Yoga Instructor
After graduating in 1999 from Capital High School in Olympia, Vajra went to the wilderness to contemplate the meaning of life. After a bad judgement in direction, Vajra spent seven days lost in Olympic National Park. During this time of desperation, with no food or certainty of making it out alive, Vajra was forced to turn inward and discover the indestructibility of his True Self.
More about Vajra
With their combined yoga and meditation experiences and with deep roots in the Olympia community, husband-and-wife team, Vajra Romano and Christina Lagdameo, have established True Self Yoga with the mission to bring out your highest good.