Years ago, at an awards ceremony honouring BKS Iyengar, he paused to acknowledge Vanda Scaravelli by saying that she had made a significant contribution to the evolution of Yoga in the Western world. In the pursuit of freedom within her body and particularly her spine, Vanda changed a lot of what Iyengar first taught her but she never forgot the safety and alignment that he preached. Her insight into the ground, the breath and the spine revolutionized movement. Esther Myers also studied first with Iyengar and then came across the magic of Vanda. Marrying such a free and feminine movement style with Karate with Ted Jungblut, Esther developed her own style of tremendous focus on safety, space and integrity. Neither Vanda nor Esther wanted the style named after them because they knew that every person that studied with them would create their own. And so, here at Ahimsa, we teach Hatha Yoga. Allie studied teacher training with Esther Myers 1996-1998 and then shared that teaching with Wendy Martin in 2004. They have each developed, as Vanda predicted, their own style based in their own life experiences and learning. In studying with Esther, Allie was quickly in agreement that a long training allows for evolution and transformation. Yoga teacher training is disruptive, disarming and life changing. All of our trainees go through some sort of break down of structure in their lives while practicing so deeply. In a longer program, they have time to also then rebuild while learning a wide spectrum of integral information to be a safe, good and effective teacher. For this reason we will only hire teachers that have a minimum of 500 hours of training. Evolution takes time.