About Mark

Mark Stephens is widely regarded as one of the leading teachers of yoga teachers in North America. He is the author of Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques (North Atlantic Books 2010), a national bestseller that is the core textbook in scores of teacher training programs, and the forthcoming Yoga Sequencing: Foundations, Principles and Resources (North Atlantic Books 2012). His eclectic style and open-minded approach to practicing, teaching, and training draws from deep study of Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa, Anusara, tantra and qi gong as well as learning theory, yoga philosophy, functional anatomy, bio-mechanics and kinesiology, offering a synthesis of traditional and contemporary insights into yoga.

Mark started exploring yoga as a teenager in the 1970s, began a consistent daily yoga practice in 1991, completed the original Yoga Works teacher training in 1995 and has taught yoga since 1996. He did advanced teacher training at Yoga Works from 1995-1997.

In 1997, Mark founded Yoga Inside Foundation and began training yoga teachers and giving them support in bringing yoga into hundreds inner city schools, treatment centers, prisons and shelters across the U.S. and Canada; he received Yoga Journal’s 1st Annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000 for this non-profit service. He is the founder of L.A. Yoga Center (now Yoga Works Westwood) and Santa Cruz Yoga, where he presently teaches.

Mark has written the “Art of Asana” column for Yoga International magazine, is working on a new book of inspirational yoga poetry as well as a series of online videos of teachers and students, and conduct classes, workshops, and retreats worldwide.

Mark's Longer Story...

Twenty-five years ago I couldn’t imagine being a yoga teacher. Although I had dabbled in yoga in my late teens, things like college, work, and relationships took me in a different direction. Indeed, I went so far in another direction that yoga would seem farthest from it, yet that path brought me back to the practice in a way that felt like coming home after a long adventure. A few years later teaching yoga became the most natural expression of what mattered most in my life.

I was lucky to be raised in a family of teachers and spiritual seekers. It was truly my first yoga teacher training. My dad and mom retreated from Silicon Valley a few years before it was called that, settling in the Santa Cruz Mountains where every day they created a way to celebrate life amidst of natural and cultivated beauty of the land. They instilled a sense of playful curiosity about the world, inspiring my siblings and I to explore and experience the world with curious and open minds. As teachers they made everything from shifts in the weather to maintaining the land into learning experiences in the laboratory of life. Without ever suggesting that we teach, they made us into teachers. Without ever asking us to bow, they opened us to experiencing a sense of spirit in every moment of life.

In 1969, when I was 10, my mother died from breast cancer. Later that year we moved south to the Mojave Desert. It was a difficult time for our family as we adapted to living without our mom; there was a palpable sadness, yet with it deeper reflection. We started asking questions about life and death, even as we enjoyed doing all the fun things kids do when being kids. It was clear that life could be really challenging, yet in the challenges lay the path to feeling that much more alive and vital. It’s an insight that I try to tap into whenever on my mat or helping someone else with a pose or breathing technique.

Five years later I had my earliest experience with both teaching and yoga. I had started tutoring in a special education classroom, which ignited a passion for teaching that has grown stronger ever since. That same year a friend gave me Alan Watts’ The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, turning me onto Eastern philosophy, meditation, and yoga. I then found a yoga book by Richard Hittleman and started playing around with the poses. Two years later, I was tutoring college students while using B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga to get more into yoga. Teaching and yoga, although largely separate, were pulsating in my body, heart, and mind.

Returning to Santa Cruz to study at the UC campus there in 1979, yoga quickly faded as I concentrated on my studies and activism in the local community. As a teaching assistant in the Community Studies program, I again enjoyed facilitating learning. I also enjoyed all sorts of sports and outdoor adventure, from playing basketball and ultimate Frisbee to skiing and competing in triathlons. After graduation I went to L.A. to work on environmental issues for a few years, gaining my first experience in teaching others how to do political organizing. With one foot firmly grounded in that work, I stepped the other back into academia for seven years of doctoral studies in macrosociology at UCLA.

My doctoral research was pretty far removed from yoga: I studied the origins and early historical development of the CIA as a case study of power at the highest levels of the American state. I loved the intellectual work, the research and writing, the give and take in seminars shared with amazingly smart people, and the sense that our work could matter in the world. Yet graduate studies also highlighted the gulf between academia and the practical realities of life in L.A. amidst the raging gang wars and social conflict of the 1980s, leading me to teach social studies and journalism in Compton, Watts, and later in L.A.’s high security juvenile institutions where I could work directly with gang members. This led to over ten years working at the intersection of the education and juvenile justice system as a teacher, administrator, policy advocate and executive team consultant.

Working with gang members marked the first time since my mother’s death that I was faced with matters of life and death on a daily basis. This brought me back to many of the questions I had explored in my teens; it also brought me back to yoga. My work and my life were seemingly in fast forward, yet I couldn’t see clearly where I was or where I was going. I wanted a better sense of balance in my life. I remembered yoga.

My first formal yoga class was with Steve Ross, who made it absolutely fun and spirited, yet deep and sublime. I began a daily practice that continues to this day. I soon found my way to Erich Schiffmann’s classes for a few years and from there to Ashtanga Vinyasa and vinaysa flow with Shiva Rea.

In 1995 I completed the original Yoga Works teacher training program and immersed myself in advanced teacher training 1995-1997, including in-depth workshops with Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, Gary Kraftsow, Ramanand Patel, Dona Holleman, Aadil Palkhivala, Tim Miller, Richard Freeman, Sarah Powers, John Schumacher, John Friend, Kofi Busia and several others. I started teaching a full schedule of classes in 1996 and have taught yoga ever since.

I founded Yoga Inside Foundation in 1997, organizing and supporting ongoing yoga classes in hundreds of inner city and poor rural schools, treatment centers, prisons and other alternative settings in 42 states, and traveling around the United States conducting yoga teacher trainings for teachers involved with this project. This experience brought me to focus more and more on developing and implementing the best possible yoga teacher training program. Yoga Journal magazine recognized this initiative with its 1st Annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000.

In 2002, I founded L.A. Yoga Center with twenty-five teachers, including Rod Stryker, Marla Apt, Chad Hamrin, and Hala Khouri, with Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea, Dona Holleman and others dropping in to give workshops. We cross-fertilized rather than remaining in the silos of yoga styles, learning from one another in developing and refining our varied approaches to teaching. This eclectic approach, integrating the best of the received wisdom of tradition with the most current insights of modern day science and philosophy, created the foundation for my yoga teacher training that prepares teachers to be their creative best in any setting.

After selling L.A. Yoga Center to Yoga Works in 1994 I resettled in my native Santa Cruz to be closer to my family, dear friends, and the amazing central coast of California. I taught classes and teacher trainings at the non-profit Santa Cruz Veteran’s Memorial Building for five years before opening Santa Cruz Yoga in January 2010. I’m home.

Over the years, I’ve taught dozens of yoga teacher trainings to over one–thousand participants, learning more each and every time and bringing that new knowledge into the next sessions. I’ve led many yoga retreats, including at Esalen Institute, White Lotus Foundation, Zaca Lake, Maya Tulum, Haramara, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Machu Picchu, Costa Rica’s Samasati Retreat, Joshua Tree National Park and in the Eastern Sierras, and have taught at Yoga Journal conferences and as a guest instructor at studios across the United States.

My status with Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT 500 allows me to award basic and advanced yoga teacher certification (RYT 200 and RYT 500) and to provide continuing education credits for all teachers. I love working with devoted yogis to help them refine their practice and learn how to share it with others in the best possible ways.

Come explore!