Undercurrent: Yoga Teacher Workshop

Who is this for: Teachers including yoga, pilates, dance, fitness, weight lifting, somatics, any type of movement based teachers!

Description: You can say "all levels welcome" and offer 3 variations for every posture & still have students that leave feeling like they didn't belong in your classes. 

We dream of a studio and classes that create the conditions for students to be playful & curious, where students can feel true belonging, with students that keep coming back because of their relationships with their teachers and peers. 

In this one hour workshop you will begin to learn how to:

• build a welcoming yoga class 
• promote consent based choices & agency during classes
• create meaningful relationships with your students

If you dream of these spaces like we do, join us at our upcoming workshop, Undercurrent.

Mutual Aid: 25% of the class fee will be given to the Maine Solidarity Fund: a “... statewide fund [that] is …designed to provide rapid, direct, and equitable support to community members facing increased detention, targeted harassment, policy rollbacks, and systemic discrimination under the new Trump administration”.

Anne Esguerra (she/siya/niya)

My yoga journey began in 2009 with heated power vinyasa and deepened into yoga therapy through Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT) in 2011. I’m certified through PRYT and the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), and in 2013 I founded Integrative Life Therapy—a space for care, connection, and embodied learning.

As a first-generation Filipino American, I root my work in Kapwa—the belief that I am because you are. I’ve never resonated with the individualism often found in wellness spaces. Instead, I focus on how healing happens in relationship—with ourselves, one another, and the systems we move through. This led me to train with Yoga Behind Bars then offering yoga and mentoring to incarcerated youth from 2016–2020.

Movement and music have always guided me—from early years in dance and theater to over a decade studying Guinean West African Dance and performing with New Moon Ensemble. Collaborations through the years with Sea Change Yoga, Prison Yoga Project, Maine Inside Out, Journey Onederland and Arcana continue to remind me that healing isn’t linear or solitary—it’s collective, embodied, and deeply human.

Liz Kovarsky (she/her): I began teaching heated power vinyasa yoga in 2011, but after a while, I realized something didn’t feel right. I shifted to sliding-scale classes, gentler styles, restorative, and trauma-informed yoga—but still felt unprepared to teach the deeper dimensions of yoga as a holistic, collectivist practice rather than the commodified Western version focused solely on asana (physical postures).

Challenging life experiences and reflection on my own privilege and gaps in awareness led me back to school, where I eventually became a licensed clinical social worker. Frustrated by the charity-over-solidarity dynamics in the nonprofit sector, I founded Electric Cottage Collective in 2024—a space dedicated to collective wellness and resisting grind culture. I approach this workshop knowing I will be changed by it and its participants just as much as I hope to contribute to our collective growth. Join us in exploring together!