Peggy Epes Brenner, PhD
Yoga Alliance E-RYT 200, RYT 500
Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor
my story.
When I started practicing yoga, looking for help with an injury, I didn’t understand or believe that yoga could have much effect on anything but my physical body. It didn’t take long for me to experience more. Over time, yoga conditions and quiets the mind. This quiet creates space for presence, inquiry, honest self-observation, and acceptance; practice with these things cultivates sensitivity, compassion, surrender, and integration to wholeness. A path to transformation.
More than 20 years later, I’m honored to be sharing what I've learned to help others find --- and keep ---- total wholistic wellness.
more than gym yoga
I'm a problem-solver, always asking questions and trying to discover possible answers, always interested in how things work (and don’t work) for us humans. My teaching blends the ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western. It reflects my deep roots in old-school yoga and Ayurveda and my advanced degree in biochemistry and molecular biology. It is filled with and fueled by curiosity, creativity, passion, and joy.
On the old-school side, my yoga foundation comes from the eight-limbed path of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, via the lineage of Krishnamacharya. This path leads away from the traps of human suffering, and it becomes possible to find peace and meaning in adversity. Hard times become a blessing when welcomed as food that can be transformed into something new. What's practiced in a yoga class typically includes two or three of the eight limbs. For those who are interested in a complete path of transformation, I teach it all.
My study of yoga led me to Ayurveda, and that has added depth and a completeness to my teaching and way of living that I didn’t know was missing. Ayurveda (translated as "the science of life") bridges my two passions, science and yoga. It makes total wholistic wellness tangible and accessible.
I have so much to learn about living and being. I'm constantly challenged to embody what I've learned. I find it all so exciting.
Change is a guarantee in life, and often it brings adversity. We can't control the nature of change (or most things, for that matter), but we can live in a way that sets us up to thrive and grow in the face of all kinds of change. On the other side of difficulty, there are three possible outcomes: you can experience set back, you can bounce back to where you were before, or you can transform the difficulty into something that didn't exist before—you can transcend.
I’m interested in the latter. It’s the goal that fuels and directs my practice and my way of living. It’s what I hope for all of us.
my training.
E-RYT 200 & RYT 500, Circle Yoga Shala, Jasper, AR
Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor, Ananda Ayurveda Academy, Willowbrook, IL
Yoga Nidra Meditation Level 1 Teacher, iRest Institute
PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of California, Davis
BA, Art History, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
what others say
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