Kathleen Kastner Mortenson
www.kathleenkastner.com

Kathleen opened Maya Yoga in 2002 and has been teaching yoga in Kansas City since 1996. ” Yoga will lift your consciousness, improve your health, transform your body and most importantly deepen your connection to your Self, to God and to all beings. It’s a powerful transformative practice to those who are open and willing to change and grow on the mat and in their lives.

Kathleen is originally from Salina, KS and has a Master’s degree in Exercise Physiology and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, from the University of Kansas. After college, Kathleen worked in San Diego for Dr. Deepak Chopra as his Personal Trainer and at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica as an Exercise Physiologist. Kathleen was one of the original co-owners of the Yoga Gallery and also taught at Maha Yoga in Los Angeles, CA, where she met her husband, Wade in a Mysore class.  She completed Tim Miller’s ashtanga teacher training in 2000 and Max Strom’s vinyasa teacher training in 1999. Her other yoga teachers include: Trish O’Reilly and Jorgen Christiansson.

Kathleen’s first DVD, “Teen Yoga,” is a level 2 vinyasa class for all ages and is available on the Store page. Kathleen and Wade have a beginner’s yoga application for the iPhone & iPod Touch:www.pretayoga.com.

Kathleen is vegan and a passionate animal advocate.  May all beings be happy and free of suffering: “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.”

Wade Mortenson

Wade co-owns Maya Yoga and enjoys teaching Ashtanga and Vinyasa yoga classes to lift energy and create a challenging class that helps prepare people to reach new heights in areas of their lives that they did not know were possible. He is a compassionate and inspiring teacher who enjoys introducing beginner and experienced practitioners to yoga and encouraging them to evolve in their practice.

Wade discovered Yoga while living in Henderson Nevada and almost immediately began integrating Yoga into every aspect of his life. Knowing that he wanted to share the gift of Yoga with as many people as possible, Wade has completed teacher trainings with Maggie Verderame of Las Vegas Nv. And Tim Miller of Encinitas, Ca. “Yoga has changed my diet, my body , and my overall health and sense of well being. Most importantly it has deepened my connection to God. I encourage anyone who has yet to try Yoga to come with an open mind, an open heart and prepare to be amazed.”

Wade was a police officer in Anaheim, CA for ten years prior to making a drastic shift in the direction of his life. Wade has taught Yoga at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the Freeman Yoga center in Fullerton Ca. And Maha Yoga in Santa Monica Ca. Wade is also an avid Reiki practitioner and enjoys working with the subtle energies of the body through modalities such as Yoga and Reiki. Wade Enjoys cooking vegan meals for his family as he feels diet is the foundation for health and wellness. He practices and teaches daily with his wife Kathleen at Maya Yoga in Kansas City MO.

Wade is the proud father of Kaden and Kaiah. And kitty cat dad to Julian, Oliver and Natasha.

Drew Corrigan
www.drewcorrigan.com

Drew was inspired to begin studying yoga in May 2004 after reading Kathleen Kastner’s moving articles on the Maya Yoga website. As a licensed massage therapist and connective tissue bodyworker since 1997, Drew is fond of saying, “the issues are in the tissues”. That means our unresolved emotional issues from the past, our habitual behavior patterns, and our ways of seeing ourselves, are mirrored in structure and function of our bodies.

For Drew, yoga is a compassionate path of healing, bringing inner peace, serenity, balance, a sense of freedom, and a reconnection to our Divine Purpose and Calling. A Yoga Alliance registered teacher, his classes reflect the teacher training programs he has undertaken with Rolf Gates (Vinyasa), Sadie Nardini (Core Strength Vinyasa), Jill Miller (Yoga Tune Up), Bhavani Maki (Ashtanga) plus many other wonderful teachers, local and out of state.

Besides practicing yoga and bodywork, his other passions include energy healing, teaching massage, preparing live-food cuisine, reading, spiritual cinema, listening to music, and most of all, MAKING A DIFFERENCE!

Lainie Malhotra

I grew up in Kansas City, have a BA in art and art history and live near downtown with my husband, son and two dogs.

Exercise has been one of the constants in my life. I have been a runner since I was thirteen. I think I learned some of life’s most important lessons from my high school track coach. One that I’ve never forgotten happened while running some horrible interval workout on a hot spring day when I was a freshman in high school.  I told my coach I needed to sit one out – I was sure that I would pass out if I kept going. She assured me that if I did indeed pass out she would revive me. I didn’t pass out, or quit track. I learned that I could do anything I set my mind to.

I started practicing yoga in 1998. I connected with yoga on a physical level first – it felt similar to running because for me both running and yoga are endless, meaning that I can challenge myself physically until my mind becomes still. in 2009 I discovered Ashtanga yoga and began practicing daily. The practice has transformed me from the inside out. The “runner’s high” I craved has been replaced by a yoga high that leaves a lasting sense of well being, peace and contentment that permeates my life. Yoga keeps my body strong and capable and my mind calm.  In this calm state of mind stillness turns into contemplation and later meditation.

I am grateful to my teachers, Kathleen Kastner Mortenson and Wade Mortenson, of Maya Yoga in Kansas City, for guiding me along this path. They are a source of inspiration and motivation to move beyond my comfort zone on and off the mat. I hope to share my passion for yoga with as many people as possible through teaching challenging classes based on the Ashtanga yoga series.  

I fell in love with yoga after my first class in 1997 and have been studying Hatha, Vinyasa and Asthanga yoga since then. The creativity and spontaneity of a Vinyasa practice is energizing and fun. Like “yoga recess”!  My Ashtanga practice continuously pushes me to learn and grow internally as well as producing external changes. I have found a consistent yoga practice frees and quiets your mind, significantly decreasing mental struggling or anxiety, there by allowing the changes you want for your life and your body to fall into place.

My background as a former massage therapist, personal trainer, and three years competing in all-natural fitness competitions, gives me comprehensive experience with the body enabling me to relate to and have compassion for my students on many levels. This understanding allows me to customize each class to help students with injury prevention and recovery, strengthening, weight loss, and stress management. I completed Maya Yoga’s Teacher Training in 2010 and have been teaching yoga in KC for three years.

I’m lucky and blessed to have a fantastic husband, Chuck, who is also practicing yoga. Together we have three smart/funny/night owl kids; Alec 15, Cody 18, and Kelsie 18 who very, very occasionally drop in to take a yoga class. My best friend Ceaser, a substantial black German Shepard, likes to wait in my car for me when I’m teaching class!

Tung Bui
www.ArtofThaiYoga.com

Born in Vietnam but raised in Kansas, Tung was introduced to yoga in 2001 and has since been practicing and studying various styles of yoga, including Ashtanga, Bikram, and Anusara Yoga. Tung loves learning and always makes time to spark and deepen his passion for yoga by attending many workshops, retreats, intensives and teacher trainings. He most recently completed Maya Yoga’s Ashtanga Teacher training program in June 2010. He has studied extensively with his favorite teachers Jonny Kest and Saul David Raye after meeting them at an Art of Vinyasa Conference in the Fall of 2007. Yoga retreats have ventured him to many places, and to name a few: Negril, Jamaica; LA and Ojai, CA; along with Haramara and Maya Tulum, Mexico are his favorites!

Along with being an attentive, patient, yoga instructor teaching from the heart, Tung is a Reiki Practitioner and certified Thai Yoga Therapist. After getting a small taste of Traditional Thai Yoga training in 2007, Tung knew he had found a healing modality that would complement his life-long journey of yoga. With his passion for yoga, Reiki healing and Thai Yoga Therapy, Tung found the perfect balance in yoga harmony, energetic healing, and blissful bodywork, thus creating his website www.ArtofThaiYoga.com in July 2009; a place to provide Thai Yoga information and his services of this artful healing modality to you!

An avid yogi, Tung enjoys representing lululemon athletica as one of their finest Kansas City yoga ambassadors. Come immerse yourself in the present moment as you follow your Bliss in Tung’s uplifting Vinyasa Flow classes that blend dynamic flowing sequences to create inner heat along with artistic held postures as you find balance, strength and freedom on and off the mat.

Gwen Hull

Yoga is my passion, and I want to share the wisdom of this ancient healing practice with everyone I meet.Yoga is about immersing yourself in your life, and becoming completely present in each moment-Living in the Now. I hope to encourage my classes to practice yoga with a deep awareness of the breath and a receptive body, not a striving mind. A daily yoga practice helps us be the best we can for the world- allowing ourselves to be open vessels for God’s spirit to move through radiating love and compassion.

My formal education was a B.S. in Health and Physical Education K-12 from the University of Missouri 1991, and a M.S. in Exercise Physiology & Biomechanics from the University of Kansas 1998. I was a Health/ Wellness teacher at Winnetonka High School and coached tennis & track my first few years out of college. I have taught fitness classes since 1986 and yoga for the last ten years to a wide variety of people-kids, seniors, pre-natal, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic pain sufferers, teenage rehab for drug addiction and obese people.

I studied formally with Genvieve Crosslin (Ashtanga/vinyasa style) and Mic and Stephanie Goodman of satsang yoga (sivananda style).I taught the anatomy and pre-natal portions of their teacher training the last two sessions.

Over the last ten years I’ve taught over 1,200 classes and, I have attended workshops by Doug Swenson, David Williams, Bhavani Maki, Max Strohm, Kim Schwartz, Mark Blanchard, Brian Kest, Saul Raye, Tim Miller, Anna Forrest, Joseph Le Page, Jeffery Cohen, and many others.

I have a commited self-practice outside of my teaching, and I practice weekly with the many wonderful teachers we have in Kansas City. I’ve practiced with Kathleen, one of my favorites, since 2002. Someday, when the kids are a little older, I would love to do a teaching intensive at White Lotus Foundation in California.

I have been married to a wonderful, loving man, Alan Hull, for seventeen years and we have four children; Tanner 14, Amanda 12, Natalie 8, and William 5. Yoga has been my saving grace during pregnancy and parenting. I bring all of this experience to my teaching, and before I begin a class, I open my heart to God’s love and ask that my teaching may be what each person in the class needs at that moment. I look forward to practicing yoga with all who read this.

Peace and many blessings.