YOGA

As a seasoned yoga teacher, Joelle has been “sleuthed” by YogaCityNYC, listed in the top 100 yoga classes in NYC by TimeOut New York, and has created instructional videos for About.com. She has also lead yoga retreats to Costa Rica with her doppelganger, Stephanie Sandleben, providing transformational experiences for students from around the world.

Joelle's classes emphasize breath and intelligent movement. They are sweet, clear, and challenging for practitioners of all levels.

After 15 years of teaching asana and writing about yoga culture, Joelle has now turned her attention towards the esoterics of meditation and self-inquiry.

Joelle is an authentic teacher committed to the yoga practice—but not only: her poetic and artistic sides give real color and personality to her teaching. She is eager to share her own living experience to help students relate what we learn in class to real life. I appreciate the clarity of her speaking and the instruction itself. Also, feeling I can let myself go with big trust because she knows what she is talking about.

— Ourida, Singer/Songwriter

Joelle began practicing yoga in 1997 as a busy graduate student and new hire in the dot-com and publishing worlds. Curious about the deeper aspects of yoga, she completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training with Alison West of Yoga Union in 2002 and began leading classes in her Brooklyn neighborhood.

Then, in 2006 Joelle started to write journalism about yoga, bringing her two passions together in one format. She has since published widely about all aspects of yoga culture, savory and otherwise. Articles from her popular blog, Yoga Nation, are archived on this site.

Joelle has written about—and done workshops with—most of the major American yoga teachers today from Rodney Yee to Gary Kraftsow, Seane Corn to Ana Forrest, David Life to Aadil Palkhivala and so on.

In 2010, while on writing a piece on Living Tantra for YogaCityNYC (now defunct), Joelle became interested in the esoteric roots of yoga. She completed a year-long course at the Himalayan Institute with Panditji Rajmani Tigunait, and this began a deeper exploration of yoga’s wisdom beyond the physical practice. Since then, she has continued to study at the Himalayan Institute, traveling to their campuses in India for extended practices, as well as taking up daily pranayama, meditation and mantra japa.

If you are looking to deepen your practice, not just the physical body but to deepen your mind, breath, and inner channels, this is the class. You will discover something new about yourself, about your breath, about your mind—which is the amazing and scary part. Challenging in ways you never expected.

— YOGA STUDENT

In 2013, while traveling with the Himalayan Institute, Joelle also met Moojibaba, an Advaita Vedanta master. By coincidence, the American publisher, Sounds True, contracted her in 2015 to develop and edit Mooji’s book Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space, which has since been translated into several languages. That project brought her deeper into his essential teachings, and deeper into her own practice of self-inquiry. This has made all the difference in every part of her life, from day-to-day relationships to editorial work.

In New York, Joelle has been inspired by the wise and poetic Iyengar teacher Genny Kapular, as well as a cast of maverick New Yorkers, past and present, such as Margi Young, Joe Miller, Lippy Orem, Alison Sinatra, Stephanie Sandleben, Nikki Villela, Erin Dudley, Jillian Turecki and many others.