Instructors
Madona Casini
Madona Casini — a mother of two, a student of natural medicine at Clayton College, and longtime North Lake Tahoe resident — owns and manages Tahoe Yoga Institute. A trained fitness and Pilates instructor, Casini understands the benefits of yoga and exercise to both mental and physical health. She has been involved with alternative and natural medicine throughout her whole life. Casini is the daughter of Judith Kravitz, founder of the Transformational Breath Foundation, an alternative healing leader. Kravitz has always instilled the principles of a healthy mind, body, and spirit in Madona.
Madona fell into yoga like most people do, for physical reasons. Her body was feeling tight and beat up from the excessive impact of professional competitive snowboarding. She started to feel the benefits immediately, becoming more limber, better able to focus and balance. Most of all, yoga started to eliminate all aches and pains.
Madona recently moved beyond the physical and understood how much yoga helps one psychologically, clearing the mind. She has seen yoga pull people out of the deepest of despair. BKS Iyengar teaches that ‘yoga begins when thinking stops.’ For Madona, yoga is not a religion but a teaching of how to walk through life being more proactive and less reactive always being mindful of your spirit.
Tahoe Yoga Institute will be a doorway for all to unite, gain knowledge, and experience some of the best yoga on the lake!
Deborah Lapkin
All paths lead to yoga. My yoga practice began in 1998 while recovering from a skiing injury. I started taking Yoga classes to help strengthen my knee and in the process found that Yoga offered many other benefits.
I became very interested in learning more about Yoga and how it can positively affect the body and the mind. I wanted to learn more about Iyengar Yoga and completed my training at the San Francisco Iyengar Institute in 2006. I've been teaching Iyengar Yoga for six years. In 2009, I became a fully certified Iyengar teacher.
I teach Iyengar Yoga because it focuses on the precise alignment of the body. Iyengar yoga helps anyone to gain good health, mental peace, emotional equanimity and intellectual clarity. I have studied and trained with the masters BKS Iyengar and Gita Iyengar, Patricia Walden, Joan White, Manuso Manos, and Janet Macleod.
Who should take my class?
- Anyone who wants to gain more flexibility and strength
- Athletes including skiers, runners, tennis players, cyclists who want to stay flexible, fit, healthy, and achieve peak performance
- People recovering from injuries including knee, shoulder, lower back, and hip problems
- People wanting to reduce stress in their lives
- People looking for greater mental clarity
- Beginners (new to Yoga) through advanced students
Bill Folkmann
Bill has over 20 years of experience with the yoga tradition and became a teacher himself to share this incredible tradition with others. Using the universal principles of alignment with energetic flow, Bill’s classes combine Viniyoga, Iyengar, and Anusara yoga. He also teaches Restorative classes.
Lynne Gardner
Lynne Gardner has been passionately practicing and teaching yoga for the past ten years. She is a certified Kripalu instructor and has extensively studied both Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga. She holds B.A. degrees in dance, humanities, and music composition and is a certified personal trainer and Pilates instructor. Her areas of specialization include yoga for scoliosis and back pain, anatomy and kinesiology for yoga teachers, and yoga and vocalization. She is co-founder of The Yoga Space Tahoe.
Jon L. Weedn
Known to Tahoe locals as “Jon L,” Jon L. Weedn explores meditation techniques and their benefits in weekly classes and workshops. Providing group support and resources to strengthen and renew established mediation practices, Jon L. helps students integrate meditation into their daily lives. A longtime proponent of meditation, Jon L. thrives on sharing his knowledge with our community.
Tammy Graham
Tammy Miller made her way to yoga by way of weight training and Olympic lifting. Yoga became the perfect complement to Tammy's background in weight training, nutrition and anatomy. And after three years of practice, she completed the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training in the Berkshires and began teaching in Tahoe City.
Specializing in Kripalu yoga, Tammy brings humor, compassion and a hint of astrology to each of her classes. Providing students with a safe environment, Tammy teachers her students to move with complete body awareness. A longtime resident of Tahoe City, Tammy lives in Tahoe City with her husband Eli and son Jasper.
Camila Ogorman
Camila Ogorman was born and raised in Argentina. She moved to the U.S. in 2002 and started a family and now has two children. Camila has worked with children for over ten years, it is her passion and she loves it. Children provide a great energy and bring happiness into everyone’s life. Camila has been studying yoga for 5 years and believes it is a practice children can benefit from.
Deborah Scraborough
Deborah first started practicing yoga 12 years ago when she started experiencing a lot of stress and chronic pain. Wanting to share the many benefits of yoga with others, she studied with Gary Kraftsow for 2 years and became a certified yoga teacher in the Viniyoga method. After completing the teacher training, she decided to go deeper into the teachings, along with learning how to serve others in a more specialized discipline utilizing the many tools of yoga, and studied for another 2 years with Gary Kraftsow to become a certified yoga therapist. Deborah is still continuing her path of study and enjoys facilitating yoga practitioners on their journey to balance, multidimensional wellness, and actualizing their highest potential.
Melesa Black
Melesa has had 5 years of personal experience with yoga. She fell in love with yoga right away because it brought her peace in all areas of her life. Melesa became a certified Hatha Yoga instructor after completing a 4 month Teachers Training at Sivananda Yoga Ashram in Nassau Bahamas. It is here Melesa learned that yoga was not just about asanas (postures) but about a way of life. Melesa also became a certified breath Facilitator and completed the Transformational Breath Professional Training. The most important part of yoga being pranayama (breath) she combines breath flow with asanas and helps create a divine flow through life.
Dr. Tim Schroeder
Dr. Tim Schroeder is an active person involved in a variety of professional and personal activities. He feels that living a balanced life enables you to reach your greatest potential in both professional and personal development. Dr. Schroeder has owned and operated a successful chiropractic clinic for over 20 years in Tahoe City. He is certified by Target Training International as a Professional Behavioral Analyst and he has extensive training in the analysis of Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values. He is the Chief Operating Officer of the World Ki Gong Club under the direction of his instructor Jae C. Shin. One of only five Level V Instructors in the study of Ki Gong in the world, he appears on a domestic and international level to teach and share his knowledge of this important health tradition. In addition he owns an energetic martial arts school where he maintains a passion as a fourth degree Black Belt and certified Master Instructor in the art of Tang Soo Do karate. Dr. Schroeder resides in Tahoe City, California with his wife, Sha and their three children.
Christopher Scott
Chris reconnected with the yogic path in 1998 – 2000 during a dharma pilgrimage through Asia and Southeast Asia. Resonating with multiple traditions of Eastern and Western philosophies, Chris' spiritual and yogic foundation is based on the Eight Limb Path scribed by Patanjali, the Tao and Lao-tzu and harmony of religions/teachings of Ramakrishna. Chris is registered with the European Yoga Alliance and International Yoga Federation, has a degree in Exercise Physiology/Anatomy, minor in Teaching/Public Health, duel certified in the Rolf Method of Structural Integration/Rolf Movement, trained at the Hakomi Institute of Somatic Psychotherapy, collegiate-level athlete, personal trainer and spent a decade as a mountain/river guide. Since the turn of the millenium, Chris has been traveling the world ascetically dedicated to learning cross-culturally. Trained is asana from Ashtanga, Anusara, Hatha, Sapta, Iyengar practices, Chris' classes unite multiple disciplines spiritually and anatomically with this philosophy...
"There comes a time when beauty and riches no longer answer the needs of the heart ... the way of heaven is to benefit others and not to injure. The way of the sage is to act but not compete." – Lao-tzu