President

Gina Callender, E-RYT 200, RYT 500, and YACEP, has been practicing yoga over 20 years and completed the YogaWorks 200-hour teacher training in Westchester in March 2013.  Gina completed her 500-hour OM yoga teacher training (YTT) with Cyndi Lee in June 2015. This training included OM Meditation YTT levels 1 & 2, Pranayama YTT and Restorative YTT modules, as well as an additional 18 hours in anatomy with Jason Ray Brown. From 2015–2016, Gina completed over 55 hours of Yin Yoga Teacher Training with Corina Benner.  In 2019, Gina completed OM Meditation TT level 3 with Cyndi Lee.  Most recently, she completed 14 hours of Nyasa Yoga Nidra TT with Nya Patrinos. Gina is always looking to learn and is constantly taking workshops to better understand the practice and share what she learns with her students.

To Gina, yoga is a transformative philosophy that goes beyond asanas, or poses, that the Western world associates with “yoga.” Yoga teaches us to slow down and be more conscious of our bodies and the world around us and can have huge physical and mental benefits when practiced regularly. Some of these benefits include lower blood pressure, being more relaxed, and greater flexibility and balance. Gina puts a heavy emphasis on the importance and benefits of Savasana, Yin and Restorative Yoga as a way to relax the parasympathetic nervous system.

Vice President

Lorraine Burton completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training in June 2020. She's been interested in yoga since she took her first yoga class through the Croton-on-Hudson Rec Department in the early 1990s and began practicing regularly in 2012. She was very happy to find the Yoga Teachers Association as a way to enhance her yoga practice, knowledge, and connections. She served as communications and marketing chair from 2015–2021 and is honored to continue to support the YTA's goals and mission in this new role.

Treasurer

Tony Salmon

Secretary—Open

Programming Chair

Sylvia Samilton-Baker, MA, ERYT, came to yoga as a young woman in her early 20s for the mental and physical benefits of the practice. She began taking yoga classes with Margo Jenni (who was trained and certified by Tao Porchon Lynch). She completed her 200-hour teacher training with Betsy Kase, owner/director of Yoga Haven, in 1999; studied at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, completing 500 training hours, in 2007; and completed 200 hours at Westchester Yoga, traveling with Tao Porchon-Lynch. Through her continuous study over the years with yoga teachers of note, including Tias Little, Erich Schiffman, Rodney Yee, David and Doug Swenson, Seane Corn, and Richard Freeman, she has developed a solid grasp of yoga philosophy, anatomy, pranayama, chakras, kriyas, and vayus.

Sylvia’s career path in social and human services eventually led her to train in trauma-informed/trauma conscious yoga. She is Sanctuary trained and brought yoga into her work as a program director at a homeless shelter for women. Sylvia saw the value of working with women who had a history of trauma and who were often from the foster care system and were rearing children through the Sanctuary model. Officially retired, Sylvia continues to teach trauma-informed yoga to incarcerated individuals (adolescent men and adult women) and to women who reside in transitional housing after years of incarceration.

Sylvia’s niche is teaching hatha and vinyasa yoga to those with chronic hip issues, especially those who have hip replacements. Her sense of humor and caring shine through in her teaching.

Sylvia is a former co-president of YTA from 2003–2008 and is happy to return as programming chair.

Membership Chair

After nearly a decade of personal yoga practice, Victoria Moya made the decision to pursue and complete her 200-hour yoga teacher training certification in June 2021 at the Ananda Ashram, Yoga Society of New York. She is currently advancing her expertise by working toward becoming a certified yoga therapist through Kripalu's Integrated Yoga Therapy Program. As a newly appointed board member of YTA, she is eager to gain insights into the inner workings of this longstanding organization and contribute to its mission. 

Social Media

Chantale Bourdages completed her 200-hour YTT in 2020, in vinyasa and hatha yoga, and then founded Breathe On Yoga. Since 2021 she has been teaching Yoga for All and Chair Yoga at the Ta Ra Institute in Valley Cottage, NY. With experience in dance and breath work and a certificate as a Bioenergetic Therapist, her classes focus on physical, spiritual and mental health, flexibility and strength.

Seeing a great demand for more accessible yoga, Chantale started teaching Chair Yoga for all ages, body types, and people with limited mobility. She is passionate about meeting students' individual needs and helping them create and maintain a sustainable yoga practice. Being able to bring the wonderful health and spiritual benefits of yoga to anyone for whom traditional forms of yoga may not always be accessible is her most important mission.

Designer

Cassie Cartiginese

Editor

Terry Fiore Lavery, RYT, is a certified yoga teacher through the New Age Center in Nyack with Paula Heitzner. In addition, she has a 200-hour certification in Kundalini yoga from Kundalini Yoga East in Manhattan. She is interested in many styles of yoga and enjoys exposing her students to all that she has learned. Terry has been teaching yoga in various locations throughout Rockland County since 2003. Other certifications she has obtained are in Integrated Energy Therapy and Pilates, as well as in senior fitness from the SilverSneakers Fitness Program and in water aerobics from the Aquatic Exercise Association. She also teaches English as a Second Language at Rockland BOCES and is a medical editor. Terry is grateful for all that she has learned from her many teachers, including the Yoga Teachers Association and her students.

Board Member-At-Large

Paula Heitzner, R.Y.T. has, during the past 50 years, trained others to teach the time-honored principles, practices and philosophy of yoga. She is part of the 200- and 300-hour Yoga Training and Certification Program team for Wainwright House in Rye, NY. Her studio, the Nyack Yoga Center, in existence since 1974, has a new home in the American Legion Hall, within sight of the Hudson River and next to Memorial Park.

Paula is a certified advanced Kripalu Yoga teacher and is skilled in Iyengar, Siddha, Integral, Kundalini, Sivananda, Bikram and Ashtanga Yoga. She has studied, in-depth, western mind/body modalities including Reichian work, Alexander Technique, Ido-Kenesis, Polarity, Bio-Energetics, and Continuum. Her classes are a synergy of East and West. In addition to teaching yoga, Paula has taught dance for more than 50 years and developed a fitness dance program based on jazz that is as unique and original as her yoga classes and presentations. Paula still dances and choreographs, and she is the author of Yoga and You for a Year: From the Beginning to the End.

Founding Member

Tao Porchon-Lynch, (1918–2020) E-RYT, IAYT was one of the original organizers of the YTA and former President Emeritus.  She founded the Westchester Institute of Yoga in 1982 and has trained and certified more than 200 teachers. Tao's remarkable teaching style reflects the many great masters such as BKS Iyengar, Mataji Indra Devi and many others with whom she has studied. In 1968, Tao studied with BKS Iyengar in Bombay as well as in Poona, Mysore and Pondicherry. She has been a member of the Ramakrishna Vivekenanda Center in India since 1939 and was a disciple of Swami Prabhavanda from 1952 until his death in 1999. Remarkably, Tao marched for peace with Mahatma Gandhi and has taught yoga in France, India, California and the East for the past 37 years.