Shiva Rea is a teacher ofVinyasa flow yoga and yoga trance dance. She is the founder of Prana Vinyasa Yoga. She is one of the best-known yoga teachers in America, and around the world.[1]
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| Personal information | |
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| Nationality | American |
| Born | 1967 Hermosa Beach, California |
| Sport | |
| Sport | Yoga, trance dance |
Shiva Rea was born inHermosa Beach, California, in 1967; her father, liking the image ofNataraja, dancingShiva, named her after that Hindu deity.[2] She started practicing yoga when she was 14 years old, learning from a library book.[1] She studieddance anthropology atUCLA, completing her master's thesis in 1997 on "hatha yoga as a practice of embodiment".[2] She studied under yoga and tantra masters includingSivananda Saraswati andDaniel Odier.[2]
She practised the vigorousAshtanga (vinyasa) yoga for ten years, adopting a morerestorative style when she became pregnant.[2] She teachesVinyasa flow yoga, having created her own style called Prana Vinyasa, and yoga trance dance.[2][3] She teaches in the USA and many countries around the world, touring each year.[2] Teachers are similarly trained in the USA and around the world in 200, 300 and 500 hour courses in her Prana Vinyasa yoga, which claims to combinetantra, yoga, andayurveda.[4][5] She has contributed to publications includingYoga Journal[6][7] andYoga International.[8]
In 2014, she wrote the foreword to Mark Stephens' third textbook on teaching yoga,Yoga Adjustments: Philosophy, Principles, and Techniques.[9]
The author andyoga therapistJanice Gates honored Rea with a chapter of her 2006 book onwomen in yoga,Yoginis.[2] Rea has contributed invited forewords to Mark Stephens's bookYoga Adjustments: Philosophy, Principles, and Techniques,[10] to Alanna Kaivalya's bookMyths of the Asanas: The Stories at the Heart of the Yoga Tradition,[11] and to Lorin Roche's bookThe Radiance Sutras: 112 Gateways to the Yoga of Wonder and Delight.[12]
She has been called one of America's leading yoga teachers.[13]The Library Journal described Rea as a "big name" and a "well-established instructor", whose DVDs embodied the "highest production values".[14] In 2009 she created Global Mala Day to coincide with the United NationsInternational Day of Peace.[15] TheLos Angeles Times described her as one of "yoga's rock stars",[16] and her classes as feeling "more like a multicultural dance session".[17]
In 2007Vanity Fair called her "theMadonna of the yoga world" in a desert photo shoot; the photographer, Michael O'Neill portrayed her in Dancer pose (Natarajasana) wearing bikini briefs and an outsize bead necklace, with two tigers in a featureless flat landscape. The article said she was "the best-known instructor of Vinyasa flow yoga" and famous for "Yoga Trance Dance". It stated that she visits up to thirty-five countries every year on her teaching tours.[18]
In 2017, Bizzie Gold of Buti Yoga published "An Open Letter to Shiva Rea", criticizing her claim to be teaching traditional yoga.[19]
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