Get to Know the People Behind Our Yoga Studio
We're a unique neighborhood yoga studio dedicated to recovering what we believe to be the essence of yoga: a traditional yoga philosophy and practice available to everyone. Yoga is for EVERY BODY! We're dedicated to teaching basic yoga for beginners as well as providing guidance & support for more advanced levels, and in various forms of practice such as Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, Yoga Nidra, Trauma-Sensitive, and Holy Yoga.
About Yolanta
Yolanta first discovered yoga 15 years ago. She fell in love with it because she found pleasure and serenity in the practice. She began with a Hatha Yoga class taught by Barbara Feldman, the director of Cambridge Zen Center and teacher of Hatha Yoga at Boston University. Yolanta made a good connection with her, and they eventually became good friends. Aside from being an experienced instructor, Yolanta is a proud mother, wife, grandmother, and pet mom.
Before starting this movement, Yolanta completed a 200-hour Back Bay Yoga Teacher Training Program. This program is focused on alignment-based Vinyasa Yoga, which integrates the strength, heat, and physical challenges of Ashtanga with the careful anatomical alignment of Lyengar.
Yolanta has been teaching yoga for beginners for 7 years now. In 2017, she has been certified to practice Five Element Yoga in Kripalu. She was also certified to teach Adaptive/Chair Yoga in 2018. In addition to that, she has been certified to teach Yoga Nidra by May 2020. Yolanta also instructs Adaptive Yoga and Guided Meditation at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University.
Yoga is good for everyone, no matter what body type you have or how old you are. With Yolanta, you can be sure that you will be in a safe, comfortable, and relaxing environment. She will also emphasize the importance of breathwork and meditation throughout the sessions. Alongside that, she likes to combine challenging poses with restorative ones so that you will make the most out of her classes.
The pleasure and fulfillment Yolanta receives from teaching are immeasurable. This is why she continues to attend to the needs of all her students, both adults and children. Her job is very challenging, but she finds it very rewarding when she gets her students to relax and meditate. As her practice grows, she looks forward to helping more people achieve wellness through yoga.
About Alli
Alli has been practicing yoga since 2009, and completed her 200-hour certification through Holy Yoga in 2016. She has been teaching at Ball Square Yoga since February of 2017 (ask her to share the incredible story of how she and Yolanta became partners!) and loves this community deeply! Apart from her passions for yoga and ministry, Alli is a perpetual learner, an amateur inventor, and a wildly enthusiastic advocate of sharing meals together.
I have been practicing yoga since 2009, and completed my initial 200-hour certification through Holy Yoga in 2016. Since then, I have continued to pursue specialized training such as HY Touch accreditation, which I received in January of 2017, and advanced education in various aspects of Yoga Therapy. I have been certified in Trauma-Sensitive Yoga since March of 2018, and most recently, Yin Yoga, for which I completed certification in June of 2021.
My interest in yoga began purely with the skeleto-muscular: I wanted to learn more about the basic concepts of restoring the body to proper alignment and conscientious engagement of muscle groups. As I grew into my own practice, however, I found myself continually astounded, even still to this day, by the seemingly endless number of health benefits yoga brings to our bodies through the yoking of breath, movement, and meditation! I am still passionate about anatomical and physiological awareness (consider all of the complex, elaborate inner workings within every square inch of your body that have to do their job just right in order for you to even be reading these words this very instant: you are a miracle!)––and I love to emphasize this in my classes. What has been even more astounding, though, is the way yoga also became an instrumental part of my life as a spiritual discipline: a framework analogous to & through which I could explore my deepening faith. I came to embrace yoga as a practice which not only enabled me to better understand & appreciate how the physical body was created to optimally function, but also to dig deeper into how & where I saw a Creator at work in my own individual being: stretching and strengthening me beyond just the physical, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, as well!
Loving people well & cultivating authentic community are really at the core of my heart––one of my greatest Joys is helping others discover and celebrate their own individual & extraordinarily marvelous design, whether on or off the mat. My desire is to bring together my interest in whole-body, whole-being wellness; my enthusiasm for learning & sharing knowledge; my passion for connecting with & caring for others; and my Love of Jesus. I am so, so grateful to be a part of the Ball Square Yoga family! I view teaching as a deep honor and an opportunity to serve others in a unique and profound way: creating space where ALL are welcome and invited to experience holistic health & healing, and facilitating practices that enable us as individuals & as a community to come together and work past preconceived notions––whether of ourselves, of our neighbors, of yoga, or of faith.
Our Community
We are teachers and a group of people teaching and taking yoga classes together, but we are much more than just that, we are a community of friends and neighbors who are dedicated to make our community healthier and better by supporting each other and Ball Square small business.