JILL ABELSON

With studio affiliations stretching from the SF Bay area to Nashville to Europe, Jill has been a devoted yoga student, teacher and teacher trainer since 1999. Her primary teachers are Sharon Gannon and David Life of the Jivamukti Yoga Method. She has also studied with American yoga pioneers David Swenson, Shiva Rea, Bryan Kest, Stephan Cope and Michael Carroll of Kripalu Yoga, and continues to study with senior teachers in the global Jivamukti Yoga community.

Her two yoga assists books were originally written and printed at a mom and pop print shop on Bayview Avenue in San Francisco, and published as companion, take-home manuals for in-person workshops and trainings beginning in 2011. At the time, few technical resources on yoga sequencing, adjustments and assists and methodology were available to new teachers and yoga enthusiasts. The manuals were in high demand, and sold out each year at the Yoga Alliance teachers conferences. The earliest reviewers were, indeed, people who attended these groundbreaking trainings and were part of the yoga scene where Jill was working and teaching. Since then, many new books and resources have come on the market, going into even greater depth, with options for advanced teachers and practitioners.

COVID-19 has created a whole new transformation in yoga, away from studio settings and toward in-home instruction. This powerful transformation is giving yoga students and teachers a unique opportunity -- to work independently, listen to their own bodies and adapt practices to their own needs. The transformation -- an antidote to the competitive atmosphere students often experienced in big classrooms -- now and frees everyone up to work at his/her/their own pace. In many ways, this is a return to the more traditional model of studying yoga, the way it was initially taught years ago.

Jill's writing has been featured on WABC-NYC, WFAS-NYC, KFWB-Los Angeles, WHNZ- Tampa, KKNW-Seattle, WTOP-Washington DC, AM New York, Women's Movement, Yoganonymous, Elephant Journal, Yogi Times, Washington Post Express, Everyday Health, International Light, My Menopause Magazine, JivamuktiYoga.com, and Common Ground. In 2005, she was named as a "Yogi Changing the World" by Yoga Journal.

www.yogaofliberation.com