Teachers
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All of our teachers are Yoga Certified, CPR Certified, and specially trained to work with all ages and all abilities. All Yoga For Life teachers love what they do and have a passion for the mind, movement, and creating a better life for everyone.
Jacky Pagone
Creator and Director of YFL
Lead Educator, Trainings Co-Creator
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Jacky Pagone is originally from Chicago, Illinois. She began dancing professionally at the age of 7, and quickly learned how powerful the mind/body connection is. Her passion for movement led her to yoga and she began a consistent yoga practice when she moved to Las Vegas in 2006. Jacky realized how healing the practice is not only for her body but for her mind and spirit. Since having two young children of her own, Jacky has become passionate about sharing mindfulness, breath awareness, and movement to everyone. She believes everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from yoga, regardless of ability, disadvantage or financial standing. The lifelong tools yoga provides continue to give long after we step off our yoga mats, and these tools will not only improve the lives of individuals, but their communities... this is creating a better world for everyone.
Jacky is a Registered Yoga Teacher, Hypnotherapist, Licensed Professional Massage Therapist, Reiki Master and
lover of movement and animals.
E-RYT, LMT, CHT
Ziya Rettig
Lead Teacher
Trainings Educator and Co-Creator
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Ziya is a passionate and nurturing woman and mother. She has worked with children her entire life and has a wide variety of experience including: working with children on the Autism spectrum as a behavioral interventionist and consultant (10 years), operating a home daycare (5 years), and multiplenanny/home management positions. She also has experience as a teachers aid in a children's fitness center and in elementary school classrooms. She is a kids yoga teacher, and a lead teacher of the YFL Kids and Teens Yoga Teacher Training. Her goal is to enhance the lives of our youth by teaching and being an example of awareness, compassion, respect and love for others and for ourselves.
Emilee Dreeke
Teacher, Social Media Assistant
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Emilee was a dancer throughout her entire childhood and has a love and curiosity for movement. Her goal is to spread the positive benefits of practicing yoga with the community. Emilee has her bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from UNLV.
Nina Linda Alvarenga
Teacher
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Nina is currently teaching Yoga classes full-time at several locations throughout the Las Vegas Valley and Henderson, in different styles including, Yin, Restorative, Vinyasa, Gentle, Beginner, Mixed Level, Kids and Chair Yoga to a variety of students with special needs. Now having taught over 3,000 hours and counting in the classroom to groups, private sessions and workshops of many kinds for relaxation, rejuvenation and stress relief to maintain mobility, encourage flexibility (mentally and physically) and inspire students in any way needed. She holds certifications in Hatha Yoga at the 200 hr and 500 hr level Speciality Training for Pre-Natal Yoga, Yin Yoga, Yoga Nidra Guided Meditation and CPR. Also registered with the Yoga Alliance and has been teaching since 2011. Her classes focus on a topic or theme every week, keeping each student interested and wanting more.
Sarah Garcia
Teacher
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Sarah Garcia was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her biggest inspiration is her mother who was a principal and educator for over 20 years. Following in her footsteps, Sarah moved to Las Vegas in 2010 and is currently aSchool Social Worker at an at-risk high school where she provides case management to families, social and emotional support for students, access to basic needs, and of course...yoga to her students in crisis.
Battling some emotional stressors of her own, Sarah stepped into her very first yoga class in 2011. Being in a space where she could concentrate on breath and body and forget the rest for an hour, she was instantly hooked and began a regular practice routine. She is passionate about serving her community through yoga. Sarah seeks to inspire her students in class both on and off the mat with power, passion, and persistence. ZFlow, Yoga Gangsters, Yog-E-Motion, and Asanas for Autism certified.
Janice Russell
Teacher
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Janice Russell was born and raised in Florida. Despite her challenging upbringing, she has always had a heart for helping others. This led to her 12 year teaching career as a Middle School Math Teacher. During that time she began a yoga practice initially focusing on gaining body flexibility. She quickly realized yoga is a whole lot more than body flexibility, noticing that not only did her body become more flexible, so did her mind. She noticed while becoming more aware of her breath, mind, and body on her yoga mat she was able to better manage the stresses of life off her mat. In 2018, she became a Registered Yoga Teacher through Yoga Alliance with hopes of sharing that same mind-body awareness with her middle school students. In January 2019, she started an after-school yoga club for middle school girls. Later moving to Las Vegas with her husband and two boys in June 2019. During this transition, she realized her traumatic upbringing was preventing her from being her best self, so she began her journey of healing from past traumas and became trained in Trauma Recovery Yoga. She is super excited to join the Yoga For Life family to help share yoga with all.
Mackenna Dayton
Teacher
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Mackenna is a Las Vegas native with a passion for all things yoga. Learning to find stillness in an otherwise chaotic world gave her a sense of direction.Mackenna's classes focus on cultivating a safe space for all children to learn awareness, community, kindness, and above all, Self love.
Alex Lindamood
Teacher
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Alexander is a graduate of Sociology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and has had experiences providing behavior therapy to children on the Autism spectrum. He has a daily Ashtanga yoga practice, and has a passion for how yoga changes lives in a positive and empowering way. Alex is excited to pursue his passion for yoga and compassion for helping children.
Stefanie Jillian
Teacher
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Stefanie Jillian is an Author and C-IAYT 1000 Yoga Therapist with a sub-specialty in Degenerative and Cardiac Diseases, Cancer, Mental Health, Addiction and Adolescents. ​Stefanie’s work as a Yoga Therapist at a behavioral health hospital, specializes in providing healing therapies for adolescents. Many young people are struggling with a lack of knowledge on how to self-nurture and rarely take time to rest, learn, heal and grow. Yoga therapy allows children to learn skills they can carry with them the rest of their lives. Through movement, breathing, Philosophy, discussion, story, music, dance and other therapies children are learning how to balance the stressors of our modern environments as well as deal with societal wide problems such as trauma, addiction and mental health. Practicing and training in Yoga Therapy since 2014, Stefanie Jillian has been educated through a program endorsed by The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) that requires 1000 hours of training. Areas of study include advanced anatomy and physiology, advanced classical yoga philosophy and psychology, advanced teaching skills, advanced sequencing for special populations and professional ethics. Stefanie Jillian holds additional Yoga Teaching Certificates in SUP Yoga, Children's Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Trauma Recovery Yoga, Yoga of Recovery, Yoga Nidra Meditation, and Yoga of the Heart.
Susan Marsh
Teacher
Susan Marsh has lived in Las Vegas for many years, originally from Philadelphia Pennsylvania, she came to Las Vegas planning to spend just a few years and ended up staying, attending UNLV to receive a teaching degree. She worked for CCSD for 26 years teaching Visual Arts in Elementary, Middle and High School, earning her Master’s Degree in Education during this time. She found her practice of yoga extremely beneficial during these years and received her RYT 200 hour teacher certification in 2005. Her yoga practice expanded to working with students and teachers in after school settings. After retirement, she traveled to begin in-depth studies with regard to mindfulness meditation techniques and healing modalities and became a Reiki Master practitioner. She has since become certified in TRY trauma recovery yoga and yoga and mindfulness training through both the Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, MD. and Yoga For Life here in Las Vegas. Helping her students discover what wonderfully creative, compassionate beings they really are will continue to be her particular passion.
Lisa Wilson
Teacher
Lisa Wilson has a passion for helping others through sharing her knowledge and experience as a Hatha Yoga teacher for the last 10 years. Lisa started practicing yoga 18 years ago. She started to practice Yoga in hopes to help with her own stress management and to help with relaxation. Lisa teaches in a noncompetitive manner and encourages all who practice with her to focus and listen to their own bodies. Lisa teaches the power of silence to help us connect the body and mind, and the power of Pranayama (breathing) in order to learn that our bodies are fully capable of getting rid of toxins that accumulate within us daily. It is like having a pharmaceutical doctor within ourselves. She teaches how important it is to connect each movement with a breath.
Lisa believes that “Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind” Patanjali
Lisa is registered through Yoga Alliance, Laughing Yoga Certified, Chair Yoga certified, and has traveled to Kerala, South India to study and practice the Science and Philosophy of Yoga.
