Sarahjoy Marsh, MA, E-RYT 500 has been teaching yoga since 1993 and has specialized in Yoga for Recovery since 2001. Sarahjoy has a Masters in Counseling and has been training yoga teachers, yoga outreach volunteers, and mental health providers, including clinical psychologists and socials workers in the therapeutic elements of yoga for 20 years. She is a student and scholar of yoga with 22 years of professional teaching experience and 25 years of yogic study. Sarahjoy is the founder of the DAYA Foundation, a non-profit center focusing on the therapeutic benefits of yoga in outreach settings in the public health and social justice margins, and Living Yoga, non-profit yoga outreach organization supporting prisons and rehab centers. From her extensive background, Sarahjoy created “amrita yoga”, a form of vinyasa yoga that integrates ayurveda, physical therapy, neuroscience, yoga philosophy and psychology, pranayama, and mindfulness. She also designed 200-hr Teacher Training Programs (one for amrita yoga; one for Yoga and Social Justice) and a 300-hr Professional Training in the Therapeutic Benefits of Yoga. She will launch an 800-hr IAYT Program in the Fall of 2016.
In her private practice, Sarahjoy combines her mental health background with the psychology of yoga and the tools of asana, pranayama, mindfulness, and meditation to support students on their journey from addiction, anxiety, or depression to the recovery of the whole self. She specializes in creating accessible tools for students, clients, and practitioners to use as breathing and mindfulness interventions in any moment (not just on the yoga mat), in teaching body-centered, applicable, and do-able life skills, in using metaphor to help students and clients to identify where they are in the journey of their recovery, and in integrating the spiritual aspects of whole-hearted living into the students/clients' process.