Debbie Cohen, E-RYT-500, the teacher trainer, has been teaching alignment-based yoga for thirty years. This will be her eighth year offering teacher training. She took her first teacher training in 1996 at the World Yoga Center in NYC with hatha yoga teacher Rudrani Ann-Farbman-Brown, a devotee of Baba Muktananda of the Siddha yoga tradition. Debbie completed her second in 2001 at S-VYASA in India, a research center and rehabilitation home outside of Bangalore, India. She completed her third in 2010 at Kripalu Yoga Center in Barre, Massachusetts, a center for which she worked as part of a team with Sat Bir Khalsa researching the effects of yoga on children in schools. She studied for 15 years with Barbara Benagh, a master Iyengar-influenced teacher, and nearly as many with Iyengar senior teacher Patricia Walden. Currently, Debbie studies with Doug Keller, who wrote The Therapeutic Wisdom of Yoga vols 1 & 2 and several other books. She has been practicing zen Buddhist meditation with Cheri Huber for over 15 years and practiced vipassana for a number of years before that. She has studied the Yoga Sutras with Swami Brahmananda from the Sivananda ashram in the Bahamas. Debbie’s experience in her 1996 training was profound enough to inspire her passion for developing and running this training and for her continued commitment to yoga study, practice and teaching.  Of all her teachers, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda of the Siddha yoga tradition has had the deepest and most powerful influence. Debbie has a BA and M.Ed from Harvard University and another MA in Applied Positive Psychology from UPenn. Prior to teaching yoga, she taught high school English for eight years.