Anne O'Brien Yoga, About Anne O'Brien

About Anne O'Brien

Anne O’Brien is a dedicated teacher and practitioner of hatha yoga whose style draws from several yogic traditions including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Sivananda, Anusara, and Vini yoga. Her practice continues to be enriched and deepened by streams of influence including her early training in classical ballet, immersion in other cultures, inquiry into different spiritual traditions, and her family life. She has had the great fortune to live, work and study throughout Europe, India, and Latin America and to study with master teachers TKV Desikachar, Dona Holleman, Rodney Yee, Edward Clark, Brigitte Longueville, Patricia Sullivan, Shandor Remete, and many others.

She teaches multi-level classes, private lessons, workshops & retreats, and trains yoga teachers. She believes in the health and well being benefits derived from yoga and endeavors to cultivate curiosity in her students allowing yoga to be a vehicle for self transformation, joy, and fun! Her classes offer a blend of precise technique, creative innovation, and conscious awareness. Anne frequently leads yoga retreats in Northern California and brings groups on international travel adventures blending cultural experiences with the practice of yoga.

Anne has practiced yoga for nearly 20 years, has taught since 1990 and is a Registered Yoga Teacher (500 level) with the Yoga Alliance. She has trained yoga teachers since 1999 and is currently a core faculty member with Turtle Island Yoga studio's Advanced Studies/Teacher Training Program in Marin County, CA , Bodyworks Yoga in Petaluma, and with Solstice Yoga in Zipolite, Mexico. She has enjoyed the opportunity to teach at yoga conferences and events nationwide offered by the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts, Yoga Journal, the Omega Institute in New York, IDEA, and other organizations. She has taught yoga at Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College.

Anne recently completed a collaborative book with esteemed teacher, Kofi Busia, honoring Sri BKS Iyengar's 70 years of teaching. Iyengar, The Yoga Master (Shambhala) offers insights, interviews, and anecdotes from 50 well known yoga practitioners from around the globe. She has periodically been interviewed about yoga by NBC television, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Sonoma Sun, regional public radio, Bloomberg radio, Elle Magazine, Yoga Journal, Free Spirit,Univision.com and other media. She was recently featured in Yogi Times magazine

With an unusual background for a yogi, Anne held senior level positions in the world of financial services and international investment banking in a career that spanned 14 years and included postings in San Francisco, Istanbul, and London. She then spent another couple years consulting in the fields of investor relations, executive presentation coaching, and event creation and management. During this time, she developed her yoga practice ultimately deciding to carve out a year off when she immersed herself in intensive study and practice with world-renowned yoga teachers in London and India.

In 1998, Yoga Journal, L.L.C., a media company producing the leading magazine on yoga, hired her to establish and direct a conference and events division. Here she found an opportunity to blend her business acumen and public speaking skills with her yoga teaching experience and passion for the practice of yoga. Today, in addition to teaching, she consults to yoga studios and other yoga related businesses helping them hone their understanding of the yoga market to maximize opportunities.

An important part of Anne’s commitment to yoga, has been her outreach to diverse communities to make yoga accessible to many. She offered scholarships to her teacher training program each year to students who would otherwise not be able to attend. She spent several years on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for Yoga on the Inside Foundation, a non-profit organization bringing yoga to public schools, juvenile facilities, treatment centers, children’s shelters, prisons and other settings where the healing and therapeutic powers of yoga can benefit the lives of people who are at-risk. She often donates yoga classes and day-long events to local charities as fund raisers.

Anne obtained her Bachelor’s degree from UCLA, earned a postgraduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and is currently completing a Masters Degree in Humanities at Dominican University where her thesis addresses the modern practice of yoga. She does her best to communicate in several languages including Spanish, Italian and Turkish and holds dual European and United States citizenship.

Contact details: yoginianne@sbcglobal.net or 707 996 2617