Instructor Biographies
Jamie Ackley - Yoga Therapist
Jamie worked for fifteen years in advocacy for people with developmental disabilities and/or sensory impairments. The children and families she was with inspired her to study holistic health...bodywork, yoga and meditation. Jamie began teaching yoga in 1998 when her first yoga teacher recovering from a severe injury asked her to assist her return to teaching. Her training has been with yoga teachers of Body Mind Centering, Yoga Therapy, classical Ashtanga, Iyengar and most recently, Anusara. Her first life teacher was her mom, Rose who demonstrates the constancy of love and compassion through any circumstance. Jamie is a graduate of the San Francisco Hakomi Institute’s two-year Comprehensive Training in body-centered psychotherapy. She maintains her massage therapy license and has over ten years of medical and rehabilitation massage experience. Her instruction is also shaped by her students, imagery from Nature, poetry and art, forms of Eastern bodywork like shiatsu and Thai yoga massage, and insights from her own practice. Students have described her classes as contemplative and creative, nourishing and supportive. The intention of her teaching is to foster compassion for our bodies and minds, steadiness in our natural wisdom, and the sweet recognition of our innate goodness. Jamie especially likes to make the heart-centered and life-affirming benefits of yoga available to people who do not have easy access to yoga or do not think they can “do” yoga. She is happy to teach publicly, and has a private practice based in Santa Cruz. Feel free to contact her at jameslyne@cruzio.com.
Lila Specker - RYT200
Lila grew up in Vermont but fell in love with Yoga on Maui, and completed her teacher training with Nadia Toraman of Maui Yoga Shala in 2009. Her teacher Nadia inspired her to practice yoga for love, peace and health. Lila's personal yoga practice focuses on strengthening and opening the body, and in the words of Chuck Miller, in "finding resolution in opposition." Lila believes in the power of yoga to transform bodies and lives. Her passion for health and medicine as an EMT and as a pre-medical student at the University of Vermont drew her to yoga therapy. Currently, she plans on becoming a Physical Therapist and looks forward to combining both methods of therapy to better serve her students. She was fortunate to connect with Annica Rose when she moved to Santa Cruz, and feels grateful for the opportunity to learn from Annica as well as from the other assistants and most importantly, from the students. Each day is a new adventure.
Ruth Paddell
To be added.