Owner and Director of Root: Center for Yoga & Sacred Studies in Colorado Springs, Jessica has been practicing Yoga since 1993 and teaching for over twenty years in CO and all over the world. She is a Certified Yoga Therapist, E-RYT 500, director of both the RootEdudation (RootEd) and (Un)training programs, and faculty for Inner Peace Yoga Therapy school. She is completing her PhD in Yogic Studies through the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology in the Joint Doctoral Program in Religion. She brings her work as a scholar-practitioner into all she does, including retreats and pilgrimages to regions in the Rocky Mountains and as far afield as Northern Iceland. Her classes are always a reflection of her deep devotion to the roots of the practices, emphasizing breath, meditative focus, and invigorating movement. Her scholarly work explores the intersections of embodied practice and social-ecological justice. She is committed to Yoga as the direct means for enacting transformation in communal as well as individual bodies. While her classes can be physically rigorous, Jessica consistently teaches to that which cannot be taken away.

Throughout her decades of exploration, Jessica has had the great privilege of learning through many methods, approaches, and teachers. Her formal training as a teacher began with a 200-hour program in Colorado Springs. As her own yoga practice deepened, so too did her understanding of its profound transformative and regenerative power. She continuously sought out opportunities to learn and grow as both practitioner and teacher, pursuing numerous trainings with diverse teachers across lineage and tradition. She holds certifications in seven different schools of Yoga and brings a kaleidoscopic perspective to all she shares.

Notably, her lifelong dedication and commitment to nonviolence and an ecology-centered ethos led her to advance her training early on as the only Certified Jivamukti Teacher in Colorado Springs. She is a longtime 500-hour E-RYT with Yoga Alliance and an IAYT certified Yoga Therapist since 2013. She serves as lead faculty for the Inner Peace Yoga Therapy program, offering teachings on the subtle/energetic body. Her work as a Yoga Therapist complements and expands what she is able to offer individuals and groups, with a particular focus on grief, loss, and end of life. Jessica continues joyfully to delve deeper into her own practice through annual immersions and master classes, Sanskrit studies, and workshops with beloved and inspiring teachers across many, many wisdom traditions.

As founder and director of the year-long RootEd Apprenticeship & Teacher Training Program, Jessica leads small intimate groups of students more deeply into the embodied experience of Yoga with a call to live the teachings we seek to teach. In 2014, she opened Root: Center for Yoga and Sacred Studies, a Colorado Springs-based sanctuary for the community that has inspired her work all of these years. Root is a home for public classes, workshops, mentoring programs, as well as special offerings like the Sadhaka Sessions (intensive learning modules for those who seek deeper study outside of “teacher” trainings). Whether working with individuals one-on-one through Off the Mat/Sadhana Guidance or Mentoring programs, teaching public classes, or immersing in more intensive offerings, Jessica is committed to sharing Yoga as relevant to our modern lives. Making it “real” is what it’s all about.

As a scholar of Yoga and pilgrimage, she is dedicated to the intensive spirit of workshops and retreats throughout Colorado and other locales (including Yelapa, Mexico, Hawaii’s Big Island,  Iceland, Italy, Ireland, New Mexico, and beyond), specializing in Rewriting Embodied Myths, The Sacred Altars and Elements, Personal Practice, and more.  She has served as a faculty member/guest teacher for various teacher-training and yoga therapy programs across the country. She has taught nationally and internationally, and is currently designing immersion projects that emphasize inner pilgrimage.

Prior to her PhD, Jessica completed her M.A. in English and is a graduate of the renowned Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the Denver-based Nutrition Therapy Institute, education she weaves together as a teacher, writer, nutrition therapist, and integrative consultant to emphasize integration and wholeness in all she does.

Jessica believes that the ultimate purpose of yoga is to remember and embody who and what we really are and to recognize that as whole and holy. The goal of her teaching is to help students free themselves from limiting thoughts and ideas. And that is the sole focus of her classes. teaching with deeply spiritual, physically rigorous, and truly uplifting classes that seek to empower and bring joy to each student.

Learn more about Jessica on Patreon →