phoenixyoga.net

Phoenix Artemisia
is a longtime Yoga instructor and is the founder of Watsonville Yoga, Dance and Healing Arts. She has lived in Corralitos and Watsonville since 2002 and celebrates the opportunity to provide a dedicated center for culture, learning and personal growth to the community.

Phoenix began her journey with Yoga in 1994 while immersed in a stubborn clinical depression that had emerged when she was 12. This illness, which drove her deeper into Yoga over two more decades, was rooted in the loss of her birth mother at a young age and in grappling with the disempowerment of women and the desacralization of the Earth. Through her fortunate meetings with teachers in Yoga practices, women's spirituality, travel, dance, studying and participating in the traditions of the Red Road (indigenous spirituality from the Americas) under the guidance of precious Elders, service to others, and becoming a mother to two amazing children along with her beautiful partner Tom, she has been able to recover a daily sense of access to the infinite potential rooted in the ups and downs of Life.

She has completed hundreds of hours of trainings, most notably with the Mount Madonna Institute, in India over 6 months of residency at Parmarth Niketan Ashram studying under Sadhvi Abha Sarasvati, and with local Senior-Certified Iyengar Yoga instructor Kofi Busia. Phoenix is grateful to have studied with T.K.V. Desikachar and his family, Tom Machado, Sarah Powers, Karyn Bristol, Kelly Blaser, and also recently with Maria Calabria.

Her other work has included being a teacher in after school programs for PVUSD, first with migrant farmworker families at Mid Pen Housing, then directing an academic and creative arts program for Valencia Elementary School. Phoenix has also worked as an advocate for women and children survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse at Defensa de Mujeres (now Monarch Services).

She has led international Yoga retreats in India, Mexico, Greece, Arizona, and all over California and has a deep interest in archaeology, history, and indigenous cultures from all over the world. She has traveled extensively through Turkey, Greece, Tibet, China, India, Taiwan, Egypt, and France and Mexico.

Her Yoga classes are grounded in classical practices and she has studied Sanskrit, Yoga philosophy, and anatomy for many years to further her ability to share the blessings of the practice in a Universal way with people of diverse backgrounds. Phoenix has taught not only at studios but also at companies, group homes for teens, for women's retreats, creative artists and poetry groups, and generally anywhere within reason that people request it of her!