About Lucie Kasova
Making Yoga Practices Accessible
Known for a teaching style that integrates yoga, breathing techniques and mindfulness, I offer clear instruction, alignment cues and posture modifications, helping you cultivate strength, mobility and flexibility, as well as clarity of mind. In addition to group and private yoga classes, I teach Yoga Nidra classes for insomnia, stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD.
No matter your experience level, my intention is to make the yoga practices accessible and support you to overcome challenges, increase vitality, restore balance and optimize wellness, with a process that is focused on learning and growth rather than fixing.
Drawing on my practice of yoga and meditation for more than two decades, I bring warmth, passion and insight to my classes. Designed to inspire in a supportive way, my classes are open to students of all shapes, sizes, ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities. I believe that yoga offers something to everybody, enhancing their health, increasing vitality, and improving their quality of life.
Teaching and Training
I've taught yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, yogic philosophy and Yoga Nidra in a number of corporate, hospital, non-profit and school settings including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Mount Auburn Hospital, Northampton Insight Meditation Community, as well as to students at Harvard University and MIT Sloan School of Management. I was on the teaching team of a yoga study at the Boston Latin School, led by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, examining the impact of yoga on teen drug-use risk factors.
As a life-long learner, I’m committed to ongoing study, including trainings in Yoga Therapy, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga and Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. I feel grateful to be working with a diverse student cohort, from teenagers to octogenarians, and see them experiencing the positive impact of this life-changing practice. Explore the path of yoga to live with greater ease, equanimity, health, joy and happiness!
Group Classes and
Private Sessions
I teach classes and workshops in the U.S. and Europe, and work individually with those interested in healing and wellness, offering private yoga and Thai yoga bodywork sessions. I also present yoga and mindfulness classes to non-profit organizations, schools and businesses of all types.
Yoga Nidra
I used Yoga Nidra for my own healing from a traumatic brain injury several years ago, training my nervous system to re-activate the relaxation response, to help reduce erratic heart beat and promote healthy production of important hormones and neurotransmitters in the brain much needed for healing. Click the Learn More button below to read my blog post: Yoga Nidra - The Antidote For Lifestyle Stress.
Credentials
-
E-RYT 500, Certified Pranakriya Professional Level Yoga Teacher (2016)
-
E-RYT 200, Certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher (2009)
-
Studied extensively under Yoganand Michael Carroll, former Dean of the Kripalu School of Yoga and founder of Pranakriya Yoga
-
Shaped by Kripalu, Pranakriya, Anusara and Iyengar yoga methodologies
-
Rajanaka Yoga philosophy with Dr. Douglas Brooks
-
Therapeutic focus: Therapeutic Approach to Yoga with Doug Keller
Additional Trainings:
-
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
-
Yoga and Meditation for Traumatic Brain Injury
-
Yoga Nidra
-
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
-
Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training
-
Kripalu Yoga in Schools Teacher Training - evidence-based curriculum designed and tested specifically for adolescents by Kripalu’s Institute for Extraordinary Living
My Story
I was born and raised in Prague, where I studied art & design. In my teens, while attending an art school, I became part of an underground opposition movement against the totalitarian regime, mostly using art, literature and music as a form of protest.
In the late-70s, around the age of 13 or 14, I attended my first yoga class on the invitation of a family friend who worked at the Tyršův Dům (Tyrs House), which was—for its time—a modern athletic center, and the largest of its kind. It was housed in a baroque palace, in the style of Rome palaces of the 16th century, decorated with rich stucco—today one of the most valuable historical buildings in Prague. I don’t remember much from the class except that while lying in a supine position we were instructed to pay attention to the minutiae of movement in our feet. This experience stayed with me, even though it took a couple decades before I rediscovered yoga.
Tyrs House, Prague
Alsace, France 1983
After my family moved to Western Massachusetts, my work as a freelance graphic designer provided me with the opportunity to barter services with a local yoga studio. I designed their flyers and marketing materials in exchange for weekly yoga classes and weekend workshops with many inspiring guest yoga teachers. They taught me a lot.
At the age of 19, I emigrated to West Germany and later to France before coming to the United States. When I was invited to attend yoga classes in the mid-90s—this time the setting was an old barn in a rural area of Northwestern Connecticut—I found it physically very challenging. Paradoxically, I soon realized that the yoga classes provided much-needed energy, focus and the ability to de-stress at a time when I was running a business while raising three young children.
In 2009, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, I made a bold decision to enroll in a yoga teacher training and started teaching yoga right after, while I was still working full time. Eventually the computer-intensive work, and the daily stress, created a chronic shoulder inflammation such that I decided to leave the design profession altogether. I moved to Cambridge, MA to pursue yoga teaching full time. I've never regretted it.
Yoga Teacher Training Graduation, Kripalu Center, 2009