Natural Awakenings recently asked local yoga studio owners and teachers to nominate individuals to be recognized as “outstanding yoga teachers.” We chose to sidestep the “Best Of” polls that are open to anyone and don’t prevent people from voting multiple times since those are essentially popularity contests. Instead, we hope to recognize those who demonstrate that they adapt to the unique mix of students in their classes, that their students feel they learn something in class, and that they honor the tradition and complexity of yoga itself.
 
After evaluating the responses, we are recognizing Cynthia Pedraza, Dannie Lynch and Amanda Seaman as three of Atlanta’s outstanding yoga teachers. All are dedicated to the student experience above all else, seeking to create safe and spacious studio classes that cultivate deep peace. Driven by their experiences as students, they are in touch with the healing capacity of yoga and have a fervent desire to pass it on to others. Finally, all of them exhibit a deep connection to their communities through the studio life they’ve fostered and through community work with vulnerable and/or underserved populations.

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A Student-Centered Approach

Although our honorees teach different styles of yoga and come from very different training environments, they share a very similar approach to their teaching: it’s not about them. Their students’ experience is paramount. In order to create a healing space for whatever is arising for their students in a given yoga session, they minimize the role of their own egos and concerns.


Cynthia Pedraza teaches hatha yoga at gruvnYoga and PeakZen in Marietta and Naked Mind Yoga and Pilates in Roswell. Originally from Mexico, she’s been teaching in Spanish and English for over 10 years and recently returned to Atlanta after some time in the Pacific Northwest. Pedraza describes herself as a facilitator of the yoga tradition. She feels that by aligning her passion—what inspires her—and her purpose—how she inspires others—she can facilitate yoga for her students, and the teachings of yoga “come through” her. Pedraza’s three-pronged approach encompasses postures with a purpose and intention, contact with the breath and an underpinning of yoga philosophy.

At the same time, she is flexible. She wants the teaching to feel organic, personal and applicable to daily life. “One of my missions as a teacher is to project these ancestral teachings in a very tangible and easy way,” says Pedraza, “—to understand how we can apply the philosophical concepts of ancestral yoga as moms, as wives, as workers, in any aspect of our life.”

Amanda Seaman is a Montessori teacher turned yoga instructor in North Atlanta; her own yoga service to others is deeply informed by a healing journey and a return to yoga after many years away from it. Seaman’s client-centered focus and her adaptability to her students’ needs show up slightly differently from Pedraza’s.

“I just teach from here,” says Seaman as she points to her chest. “That’s what I think my students enjoy about my classes. I’m really authentic. I tell stories about leaving deli meat in my purse! I’m just really human—a real person with real stuff going on. Instagram and other social media have skewed what yoga looks like. It’s given people an idea that it’s for people who are very bendy and stretchy and beautiful. The truth of the matter is that this practice is meant for humans, meant for humility, meant for healing.”

Seaman plans what she’s going to teach, but she always checks in with her students, senses the needs arising in the room—both spoken and unspoken—and has the flexibility to teach to those concerns.

Dannie Lynch is a hot yoga teacher at Red Hot Yoga Smyrna and has been teaching yoga for more than 10 years. As a lawyer, she works with vulnerable populations as well, and her life’s work is to bring space and respite to others. Lynch prays for guidance and wisdom before each class she teaches. “It’s just as simple as that,” she says. “I ask God to please give me whatever I need, to help them find whatever they need… The prayer’s not necessarily for them; it’s a reminder for me that it’s not about me. Because ego is real, and it’s gonna sneak up. I tell myself, ‘This is their space. Create the space.’”

The Teacher is Also Always a Student

Pedraza, Seaman and Lynch suggest that their own experiences as students have shaped how they teach; remembering their student-self helps them serve others now, they say. After years away from it, Seaman came back to yoga, seeking healing. She arrived back to the practice with a lot of worry and stress as well as a new body and perspective after becoming a mom to three boys. “I ended up going to [Korsi Yoga in Roswell] and just kind of surrendered to that space and the teachers, surrendered to the person that I was, to the worry that I was carrying. Surrendered to the practice, really.” She has remained in that community and continues to teach at Korsi partly because of her experience as a student. “I healed in that room and in that community and was embraced there,” she says.

For Lynch, teaching outside of yoga studios has allowed her to bring experiences of peace and rest to people who don’t “do yoga.” In her initial experiences of yoga as a middle-aged woman of color, Lynch was able to observe first-hand many of the ways in which Western studio environments excluded bodies and backgrounds like hers. As a result, she wants to provide an inclusive and affirming yoga experience for all populations. “I like gym-people finding their peace and rest. I like when they snore; I love it. They’re used to lifting and grunting and all that, and with yoga, they’re finding another space to be able to still get some movement in, but also find some peace.”

By nourishing the student aspect of herself, Pedraza feels she can better connect—“human to human”—with her students. “I think I’m really at the point now of seeing my students through the eyes of humanity. I teach yoga with a [capital] ‘Y.’ [After all,] yoga invites any practice that helps us remember our true essence, which is pure loving awareness. There’s no one way. There’s many ways to explore that. That, for me, is yoga.”

Serving the Community and Those in Need


All three of our outstanding yoga teachers integrate yogic values and principles into their daily lives and allow the practice to guide them outside of the studio. Specifically, they are deeply involved in community and volunteer work. Seaman, for example, teaches at and does fundraising work with TLC Yoga, a service provider to the unhoused population of Atlanta. “We provide a safe space for the unhoused to rest. We offer a meal, a mobile shower, medical care and a very gentle yoga practice,” she says. “Connecting on a level of just pure human connection is a really beautiful thing [since] people come in so stressed and broken and worried.”

Similarly, in yoga studio settings and on retreats, Pedraza works to provide safe spaces for women to share their stories and come into community—to feel less stressed, more heard, more seen and less worried. She will also be a key contributor to the first Atlanta Hispanic Yoga Festival, which will be held in September. The Festival is intended to nurture “a community that celebrates identity, fosters connection and empowers each person to thrive.” Its inaugural weekend heralds a new season of inclusivity and accessibility for the Spanish-speaking community in Atlanta.

Lynch, too, volunteers in a meaningful way in the community, serving those coming in and out of City of Refuge, a faith-based crisis center for families in Atlanta. “That’s why I’m teaching,” says Lynch. “If I can create one hour of space or help someone find what they need internally, then I feel like I might be doing a little bit of what God put me here for.”

Get to Know Our Outstanding Yoga Teachers

Just for fun, we asked these wonderful teachers a few quick questions about themselves:

Cynthia Pedraza
Favorite home studios: Gruvn Yoga, Naked Mind Yoga, PeakZen Yoga
Favorite yoga pose or practice: Trikonasana. It gives me a deep sense of space and openness.
Best music genre to practice to: Classical music for its flow and depth.
Most memorable place you’ve practiced yoga: A pre-operating room before surgery
First yoga experience: Hatha yoga in a small beach town in Mexico

Dannie Lynch
Favorite home studios: Red Hot Yoga
Favorite yoga pose or practice: Malasana—Garland pose
Best music genre to practice to: It depends on the mood I’m in…
Most memorable place you’ve 
practiced yoga: At a studio in Medellin, Colombia. It was a yin
class, and the entire class was taught in Spanish. I’m not fluent, but because she used Sanskrit, I was able to follow along with ease.
First yoga experience: At the campus fitness center in law school; I heard it helped with stress—LOL!

Amanda Seaman
Favorite home studio: Korsi Yoga
Favorite yoga pose or practice: Child’s pose. I call it the “white flag” of all yoga poses. It’s 
a pose of surrender, grounding, forgiving and healing.
Best music genre to practice to: I love a good New Age, soulful tribal beat with some Pearl    Jam and 90s rock sprinkled in for fun!
First yoga experience: Gentle yoga at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, North Carolina
Most memorable place you’ve practiced yoga: With the unhoused in downtown Atlanta ❧

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Patricia Schmidt, C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, YACEP, is a certified yoga therapist specializing in pelvic health, accessible yoga and yoga for cancer support. She is a Franklin Method trainer, Roll Model method teacher and somatic movement specialist. To learn more, visit PLSYoga.com.