Explore the heart and soul of Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Mark Stephens, an esteemed teacher of teachers. Known for his commitment to cultivating yoga as a sustainable practice, Mark’s clear and inspiring guidance will lead you to higher levels of awareness and wellbeing. Opening yourself to the graceful power and integrated flow of the vinyasa method, Mark will help you learn to develop your own personal practice. Mark Stephens teaches Soulful Vinyasa Yoga in Santa Cruz, California and worldwide. His studies in Ashtanga Vinyasa, Iyengar, Tantra, Ayurveda, Buddhism and secular spiritual philosophy inform his approach to teaching and living yoga as a daily practice. The founder of Yoga Inside Foundation, he received Yoga Journal’s 1st Annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000. Mark's first experience with yoga in the mid-1970s arose from his interest in Eastern philosophy, metaphysics and the exploration of expanded consciousness. Within a few years he focused on more external matters, working for many years as an environmental and social change activist. Diving back into yoga in the early 1990s, Mark taught for several years at Malibu Yoga, Yoga Works, and at his own L.A. Yoga Center. His student clientele included many celebrities, including Mariel Hemingway, Barbra Streisand, Robert Downey Jr., Cindy Crawford, John Cusack, Olivia Newton John, Kenny G, Diane Lane and Courtney Love. Recognized at the Advanced Teacher Level (ERYT 500) by the national Yoga Alliance, Mark's Vinyasa Flow Yoga Teacher Training and In-depth Studies Program is a Registered Yoga School (RYS) offering 200- and 500-hour certifications. Guest instructors in the program include Shiva Rea, Sally Kempton, Joel Kramer, Ganga White, Sarah Powers, Jill Miller and James Bailey. Mark's practice and teaching blends a variety of traditional yoga stylyes (primarily drawn from the Krishnamacharya lineage that includes Ashtanga Vinyasa, Iyengar and Yin/Viniyoga) with insights adapted from his studies of Tantra, Ayurveda, spiritual philosophy, Bio-Mechanics, Functional Anatomy and Physiology. The practical benefit of this eclectic approach is highly informed instruction that is at once methodical and inspirational, clear and spirited, strong and gentle.