Training Yoga Teachers in Seattle since 2002.

The additional 300 hours that take RYT 200s to RYT 500. Join when you’re ready, finish at your own pace.

Study with Internationally recognized instructors such as:

Rod Stryker  l  Gary Kraftsow  l  Sarah Powers  l  Nikki Myers

Michelle Johnson  l  Shari Friedrichsen  l  Baxter Bell, MD  l  Hala Khouri 

Currently all four 8 Limbs physical studios are closed temporarily and we are operating one Livestream Schedule. Until our studios reopen, all trainings will be conducted online through Zoom. We’re having a great time staying connected and engaged during this time of social distancing! For more information email teachertraining@8limbsyoga.com.

Yoga teachers are, at heart, dedicated yoga students. As students, we are always learning, filling our wells and receiving deeper insights through continued practice and study. As teachers, continued study allows us to expand our repertoire and more fully develop our voices and yogic lifestyles. As practitioners, we seek a sangha, or community, with whom we can share our journey.

8 Limbs Yoga Centers, a state licensed vocational school, invites yoga teachers to join our 500-hour Advanced Teacher Training. Our goal is to provide a program and community to help you prosper – in your practice, in your studies, and in your career as a yoga teacher. In this spirit, students will be exposed to a variety of texts, teachers and approaches. This program provides the 300 additional hours of training for 200 hour RYTs to move to this next level of professional development. You may join the program at any time, and finish at your own pace. We have added 1/2 modules and some weekly (series) offerings to support our online learning during Covid-19.

“I seriously LOVED this past weekend of Teacher Training. I feel totally inspired and energized.

Signing up for your 500 hour program was one of the best decisions I have made. I am so pleased.”

With a lot of appreciation, Maria Williquette, MA, LMFTA, RYT

Information Sessions:

Please join us for a Teacher Training Information Session to meet one of the Instructors in person, learn about the program, and ask any questions you have about our program. Info Sessions are not required for enrollment.

If you would like to be notified of future Info Sessions, speak to an Instructor or the Director before the next Info Session, or are unable to attend one, please email the Admissions Coordinator at annephyfe@8limbsyoga.com with “500-hour Teacher Training” in the subject field.

2021 Schedule:

✓ January 12-February 16, 2021: Yoga Sutra Series * with Douglas Ridings
✓ January 27-March 10, 2021: Living the Lessons of the Bhagavad Gita Series* with Claudette Evans
✓ Jan. 31, March 14, May 2: Yoga Practices for our Times* with Shari Friedrichsen
✓ February-July, 2021: Mindfulness Teacher Training with Brent Morton
✓ February 26-28, 2021: Prenatal Teacher Training – Teaching Methodology I with Megan Sloan
✓ February 23-March 30, 2021: Deepen Your Asana Series* with Nancy Burtenshaw
✓ March-June 2021: Collective Resilience Trauma-Informed Yoga Training with Hala Khouri, Kyra Haglund & RW Alves
✓ March 2-April 6, 2021: Intro to Tantric Philosophy Series* with Douglas Ridings
✓ April-November, 2021: Yoga for Cancer with Cheryl Fenner Brown
✓ April 16-18, 2021: Prenatal Teacher Training – Teaching Methodology II with Megan Sloan
✓ May 13, 20 & 27, 2021, 6-9pm PST: Yoga for the Autonomic Nervous System* with Gary Kraftsow
✓ June 4-6, 2021: Skill in Action with Michelle Cassandra Johnson
✓ June 9-11, 2021 (A/P) and June 12 & 13 (Pract.): Prenatal Teacher Training – Anatomy & Physiology & Practicum with Megan Sloan, Anne Phyfe Palmer, & Susan Grote, PT
more to come!

* these offerings are 10 hours, 1/2 modules.

About the instructors: Anne Phyfe Palmer, Claudette Evans, Michelle Johnson, Nancy Burtenshaw, Douglas Ridings, Brent Morton, Megan Sloan, RW Alves, Cheryl Fenner Brown, and Susan Grote, PT

Anne Phyfe Palmer
What to expect in Anne Phyfe’s classes: Anne Phyfe’s focus in teaching is to find both energy and calm through these ancient practices. Her classes are both strong and reflective, and usually involve a theme or intention in practice. Anne Phyfe has just returned to teaching drop-in classes after a sabbatical. View her teaching schedule at www.annephyfe.com/yoga. Listen to her audio class Awaken Fierce Compassion recorded by Yoga International.
Main Influences/Styles/Traditions: Anne Phyfe currently studies in the Tantric tradition of The Himalayan Institute. Her teachers are Rod Stryker and Shari Friedrichsen. She has also been heavily influenced by the following teachers: Gary Kraftsow, Sarah Powers, Tias Little, Ana Forrest, and her very first yoga teacher, Kathleen Hunt.

Claudette Evans
What to expect in Claudette’s classes: Claudette has a genuine passion for meeting students where they are, helping guide them toward an experience of greater strength and freedom, while allowing them to discover the wisdom that lies within their own bodies. You’ll find Claudette’s classes infused with her warm, integrative, and creative spirit, along with explorations in mantra and vibration. Her enthusiasm and curiosity are catching, and it’s clear that her teaching draws on her own love of physicality and mental engagement. Through a deft weaving of precise alignment, thoughtful insight, and a great sense of humor, Claudette’s classes create space for self-expression, clarity of focus, and the sheer joy of movement.
Main Influences/Styles/Traditions: Anusara, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Sanskrit. She also has been strongly influenced by Douglas Brooks, Christopher Hareesh Wallis, Christina Sell, Sianna Sherman, Amy Ippoliti, Ross Rayburn, Jason Crandell, and Meghan Currie.

Michelle Johnson
Michelle C. Johnson is an author, yoga teacher, social justice activist, licensed clinical social worker and Dismantling Racism trainer. She approaches her life and work from a place of empowerment, embodiment and integration. With a deep understanding of trauma and the impact that it has on the mind, body, spirit and heart, much of her work focuses on helping people better understand how power and privilege operate in their life. She explores how privilege, power and oppression affects the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and energy body. Her book “:Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World” was written for yoga teachers and practitioners.

Nancy Burtenshaw
What to expect in Nancy’s class: Nancy creates a warm and welcoming atmosphere and delivers a steady, grounded practice that is encouraging, supportive and challenging. She has an eye for detail and alignment and provides instructions that are stair stepped and inspired so that before you know it you’ll be pushing your growth edge and doing something you never thought was possible.
Main Influences/ Styles/ Traditions: Nancy became a Certified Anusara® Instructor in 2019 and very grateful for the extensive training and mentors she has had in Anusara over the course of the last decade as well as many other influential teachers that have shaped her teaching including: Tiffany Wood, Karen Sprute-Francovich, Noah Maze, Darren Rhodes, Christina Sell, Jason Crandell, and Baron Baptiste. Nancy has also pursued specialized training in Prenatal, Restorative Yoga, and iRest Yoga Nidra level 1.

Douglas Ridings
What to expect in Douglas’ classes: Douglas’s classes offer clear instruction and unusual challenging sequencing that cultivate mental focus and integrated strength without strain. Douglas emphasizes customizing a practice to suit individual needs and bodies. Some of Douglas’s classes include live music with Stephen Fandrich. Listen to Douglas’ audio class Strengthen and Focus recorded by Yoga International.
Main Influences/Styles/Traditions: Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Odissi, Butoh

Brent Morton
Brent Morton has been meditating in the mindfulness tradition starting in 2007. He has trained extensively in the Theravada Buddhist (mindfulness) tradition, spending over a year in silent retreat and practicing in Burma, Thailand, and India. He completed a four-year mindfulness teacher training with Jack Kornfield through Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin, California, in 2016. He has taught meditation trainings, retreats, and teacher training since 2014. Brent moved to Kauai last year after living and teaching in the Seattle area for most of his life.

Megan Sloan
Megan has been a student of yoga since 2001 and has found the journey of yoga to be rich and constantly evolving. She completed a Yoga Alliance Certified yoga teacher training at 7 Centers Yoga Arts in Sedona, Arizona in 2008. She continued her studies in yoga, completing a Pre/Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training with Anne Phyfe Palmer at 8 Limbs Yoga. She is a 200hr E-RYT (Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher) with over 1,000 hours of teaching experience. She is also currently immersed in a 500hr RYT training program through 8 Limbs Yoga in Seattle during which she has had the privilege of studying with Rod Stryker, Shari Friedrichsen, Tias Little and Sarah Powers. Her classes combine ancient yogic wisdom with shamanic teachings, energetic practices and a profound exploration of the subtle body. She loves to bring sound into the studio through the use of voice, tuning forks, and crystal singing bowls, and believes in the power of vibration and yoga to access healing states.She strives to find balance in the yoga studio through classes focused on the lunar and seasonal cycles, and meditation and breathwork geared toward accessing the pranic (energy) body and the chakra system.

RW Alves
RW (she/they) is a yoga teacher trainer, certified yoga therapist, social justice educator, and Somatic Experiencing practitioner who works at the intersections of social justice and trauma-informed yoga. Her teaching focuses on justice in yoga, inclusive languaging and teaching, trauma-informed yoga, nervous system resilience, accessible asana, body positivity, social justice, equity, privilege, and spiritual practice.
She is Faculty with Off the Mat, Into the World and the Yoga Service Conference, teaches Trauma-Informed Yoga with a social justice lens through Collective Resilience (collectiveresilienceyoga.com) and is a founding member of and trainer for Bending Towards Justice (bendingtowardsjustice.org), which provides anti-oppression, inclusion, equity, and social justice trainings for yoga teachers and practitioners around the country. She is a contributor to the forthcoming book Best Practices in Yoga for Addiction and Recovery.
RW is passionate about exploring and unearthing the connections and interweavings between social injustice and trauma, and social justice and resilience, and believes deeply in the power of practice to ground, sustain, and inspire us in our important and world-changing work. She is honored to hold space for people to explore deeply how to show up for justice and equity in their practice and teaching. Learn more at rwalves.com.

Susan Grote, PT
Susan has been a physical therapist for 20 years and a yoga practitioner for 25. Susan’s natural aptitude for understanding structure and spacial design initially led her to study architecture. When she was introduced to yoga in 1990, she was immediately drawn to the depth of the mind-body practice and quickly realized she was more interested in working with the dynamic structure of the human body. Susan has developed a unique multi-faceted approach to helping others by integrating her physical therapy skills, her gift for understanding the architecture of the body, and her extensive knowledge of yoga, breathing, and movement. Susan holds a degree in Architecture (1988), 200-hour YTT certification, Iyengar style (1993), a degree in Physical therapy (2006), 200-hour and 500-hour YTT certification, Viniyoga style (2009, 2012). Susan has been teaching yoga since 1993 in a variety of settings. Awed by the birth experience, she was inspired to teach prenatal and postpartum yoga for 7 years. Currently, Susan is owner of Insight Physical Therapy and Yoga and offers a blend of personalized physical therapy and yoga instruction. She also serves as anatomy and therapeutics faculty for various 200- and 500-hour yoga teacher trainings. Outside of work, she enjoys time spent with her husband and their 3 children (born 2000, 2001, and 2004).

Cheryl Fenner Brown
Cheryl found yoga in 2001 as a way to ease chronic back pain and became instantly enchanted by the subtle connections between the breath, body, mind, and emotions. Students appreciate her deeply educational approach to yoga and her classes weave anatomy, philosophy, asana, mudra, chanting, pranayama and yoga nidra together for a well-rounded experience delivered with compassion and humor. Cheryl encourages each student to honor where they are in their bodies every time they step onto the mat so deep healing and transformation takes place. She specializes in working with people over 50, cancer patients, and those with structural injuries and ailments.
Her training with master Hatha teachers from Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, California, and the Integrative Yoga Therapy school at Kripalu helps her to blend both traditional Hatha teachings and alignment principles with subtle energy work and intuitive healing.  She is certified as an E-RYT 500 through Yoga Alliance and maintains their certification as a continuing education provider.  In 2016, she was among the first group of teachers to be certified through the International Association of Yoga Therapists as a C-IAYT. She has been a Reiki practitioner since 1997 and was certified as a Holy Fire® III Karuna® Reiki Master in 2019.