Our Teachers
At Shanti Om Yoga, we are honored and privileged to host such a dedicated group of Yoga teachers. Each teacher has special skills and strengths to create classes that are full of passion, personality, and Spirit.
Austin Jai Foster
Jai was first introduced to yoga through his mom at age 4. Since then, he has been on and off the mat, often spending time at the ashram Yogaville. He assisted his mom Bhakti in many teen yoga classes as a child and even assisted a yoga retreat in Costa Rica at the age of 10. In 2017 he went to India and felt like he was at home again. Upon returning, he committed to a regular practice and to a yoga teacher training at Shanti Om Yoga receiving a 200 hour certification in Integral Yoga. In 2020, Jai went on to receive another 300 hour certification through Burning Spirits Yoga with Sandy Lawless. This training held a strong focus on accessible, trauma-informed yoga rooted in Mysore Ashtanga. Jai is a writer for St Johns Press and very passionate about Mutual Aide.
"My intention is to share an accessible, all level yoga practice with the St Johns community."
Bhakti Foster
After Bhakti's first Integral Yoga class in the mid 90s, she knew right away that she was hooked. Since then, her love and passion for yoga has continued to deepen and mature. Bhakti is a graduate in Integral Yoga through the Satchidananda Ashram. She has studied with a medley of teachers and gives sincere thanks to each of them. She has spent time in India practicing, teaching, and learning Yoga traditions, and has led Yoga Retreats to India, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.
Bhakti is a Certified Ayurveda Wellness Practitioner with over 1500 hours of training here in the US and in India. She incorporates Ayurveda in her own life practices as well as her yoga classes. Her approach to yoga is gentle and meditative even when she is teaching a vinyasa flow.
In addition, Bhakti founded and taught at her own yoga studio, Shanti Om Yoga for over 6 years in Virginia and another 7 years in Portland Oregon where she co-led two 200 hour Integral Yoga Teacher Trainings.
She moved to Costa Rica in 2019 where she taught yoga and Ayurveda medicine for four years. She has recently returned to Portland to be near her family and is now back at the helm of Shanti Om Yoga!
Dria Moore
Dria is a student of the mind/body/spirit connection. She came to yoga during a solo backpacking trip through Europe, where she found herself at an ashram in Spanish wine country, and felt the first spark of a spiritual connection. She has been dedicated to her own practice ever since, earning her 200 hour yoga teacher certification in 2018 in trauma-sensitive yoga and Power Vinyasa.
Alexandria believes in each student's ability to use breath, movement, and mindfulness as a guide to understanding one's own body and sense of self. Her classes are grounding and centering, and designed to complement how we use our bodies in daily life.
Jessica Bryn Thomas
Jessica has been practicing yoga on and off for years, but it really started to click for her after she started delving into yoga philosophy and experimenting with meditation. Once she realized that yoga asana is a way to calm the mind and get in touch with the sacred, it took on much more meaning than just exercise or stretching. She quickly realized that yoga would be an important core part of the rest of her life.
After keeping up a regular practice and learning more and more about yoga for a few years, she decided to attend Yoga Teacher Training at Yandara Yoga Institute in Baja, Mexico in the fall of 2018. Since then, she and her husband moved from Maryland to Portland, Oregon where she was welcomed in to Shanti Om Yoga in the St. Johns neighborhood.
Judy Jiang
Judy practices and teaches yoga as a form of moving meditation and a practice to deepen self-understanding, equanimity, and compassion. She was first introduced to yoga over ten years ago and meditation over five years ago. She completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training at Elk Rock Yoga Studio in SE Portland in 2025, learning from instructors such as Fawn Williams and Allegra Chabay. Her meditation instructor is Kerri Twigg who combines mindfulness with applied theater and leadership development techniques. She has completed a Dance for All Online Facilitator Training with Arts & Healing Initiative and is enrolled in a Foundations of Unified Mindfulness training as well. Judy brings to her classes her experiences as a runner, backpacker, conflict resolution practitioner/trainer, facilitator, and writer. She hopes to offer classes where students can meet their bodies and minds as they are today and where students can experience surrender and rest.
Katie Hittmeier Ray
Katie is a Registered Yoga Teacher and Licensed Professional Counselor with over 20 years of dedicated yoga practice. Her classes weave together mindful movement, breath, and nervous system awareness, creating space for both strength and softness. Deeply rooted in her work as a trauma therapist, Katie believes yoga is a pathway back to ourselves — a place to build steadiness, listen inward, and reconnect with courage and clarity. Her classes are thoughtful, grounding, and often sprinkled with warmth and laughter. When she’s not teaching or in session, you’ll likely find her knitting, spending time with her family, or out walking with her pup.
Learn more about her therapy practice here
Kavita Kat Macmillan
Kavita Kat is an interdisciplinary vocalist, musician, and performer whose work bridges yoga, somatic practice, devotional singing, and creative awakening. Using devotional practice, mantra, sound yoga, and ritual, Kavita guides participants to discover authentic voice, embodied movement, and deep listening in relationship to themselves, their ancestors, and the natural world. Kavita’s guidance, through her in-depth mentorships, retreats, and workshops, helps catalyze people of all backgrounds and ages to shed inhibition, dissolve blocks, and access their unique, authentic voice, and seat of creativity within. A long-time yoga teacher & practitioner Kavita feels blessed to be a part of the Shanti Om family.
Kavita offers Monthly Mantra at Shanti Om every 2nd Thursday!
More at : kavitakatmacmillan.com
Karen Jyothi Mertens
Karen Jyothi became a yoga teacher several years ago through Shanti Om Yoga with the hope of sharing the gifts yoga has brought to her in the practice of mindfulness, and in awareness of the many different forms of strength and balance. She enjoys teaching (and learning, always, hopefully humbly, learning) in varied settings with students ranging in ages, strengths and challenges. Her classes are based on her training and practice of Integral Yoga with emphasis on the importance of union of body, mind, and breath, challenge without strain, ease and comfort for calm energy. Pranayama (breathing practices), Hatha flow with Sun Salutations and longer held poses, and offered pose options for varied levels are a part of all of her classes.
Molly Geiger
Molly is a sound healer, singer, and yoga teacher. She completed her 200 yoga teacher training with Illumina Yoga in 2018, and has been teaching a variety of styles since then, including restorative, yin, vinyasa, and sculpt.
Molly first began experimenting with sound healing using crystal singing bowls to enhance her yoga classes and quickly began to see what a useful tool these instruments are for meditation, connection and reflection. She now offers sound healing experiences at various venues in Portland and incorporates it into her yoga classes regularly.
Michelle Yushin Bussard
A yoga practitioner for the last two decades, Michelle Yushin is grateful to all her teachers and students for deepening and informing her practice and teaching. With a teaching certificate in Zen Yoga, Michelle Yushin brings her love of yoga together with her Buddhist practice for classes that blend breath work, meditation and alignment with classic asana. As a teacher, Michelle Yushin also brings the wisdom of age, grief and aches in the body that inform her
teaching.
Stacy Tumarkin
Stacy took her first yoga class in San Francisco in 2009, and continues to be amazed by the clarity, devotion, and opportunities for self-reflection the practice brings to her life. After completing her primary teacher training with Rusty Wells, she spent 2 years in residence at the Himalayan Institute (a yoga sanctuary in the Pocono Mountains), and has also studied with Luke Ketterhagen, Noah Mazé, Jason Crandell, and Yoga Medicine. Her classes blend creative and fun sequencing with confidence-boosting challenge, and are deeply infused with the love she has for sharing the gifts of yoga with every student.
Zoe Schlanger
Zoe Schlanger, ATR-BC, LCAT, is an Art Therapist with a master’s degree in Transpersonal
Art Therapy from Naropa University. She specializes in process-oriented, somatic, and
mindfulness-based counseling. Zoe is committed to helping others heal their hearts using
creativity so that they may experience belonging and safety.
Zoe offers Two-Way Prayer at Shanti Om Yoga every 1st and 3rd Thursday which is a contemplative writing practice of Art Therapy.