Meet The Deva Yoga Team

Jayne has been practicing yoga since 2002 and opened Deva Yoga in 2017. After practicing mainly Sivananda and Hatha, Jayne decided to deepen her practice further by taking her Teacher Training with Yoga London in 2014. She has also completed further training to bring yoga to children as well as taking an intensive training with Special Yoga in Yoga for Special Children. More recently she has trained in Restorative Yoga, enabling her to work with her students on a deeper level to support much needed rest and relaxation. Having studied and practiced with many great teachers, Jayne teaches an integral style class bringing her years of practice and learnings together, making her classes suitable for all levels. Her classes are nurturing yet challenging with a hint of fun! Linking breath with movement she creates a playful sequence of yoga poses to build strength, flexibility and overall wellbeing.

Lauren graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Dance. She moved to the BIG Apple to fulfil her dance dreams. Four years into “living her dreams” she needed something different and found yoga! This let Lauren continue to move her body in a way where she still experienced the same freedom she received in her dancing but without the competitive harshness that the dance scene provided. In love with the inner peace dynamic Vinyasa yoga provided she became intrigued with the stillness of restorative yoga, deciding to complete her teacher training. Lauren’s alignment focused yoga classes are about getting her students to breathe and move mindfully. Lauren’s sequencing asks that you be present in the moment, enjoy yoga and tune into your body while practicing in a safe way so both the body and mind can feel good. She infuses each class with a different theme to lend one to dive deeper into understanding the power of yoga. Lauren is also trained in Prenatal and Postnatal yoga teaching as well!

Nina is a Senior Yoga teacher with over 20 years of experience! Her Yoga journey started when she decided to teach yoga full time after completing her Yoga Teacher training in 1998 with the acclaimed Ganga White. Since then she has trained and teaches Bikramyoga, Yin, Restorative, Yoga bugs, Dynamic Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga Nidra and is a senior teacher/ injury specialist with Fierce Grace. She is also an Accessible Yoga Ambassador in the UK aiming to make Yoga accessible to everyone. In 2012 Nina was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer and went through nine months of grueling treatment. She continued to teach throughout her treatment and attributes Yoga to getting her through this traumatic and intense time. Nina’s teachings are pure and from the heart, filled with compassion and calm, honouring the differences in everyone and living her mantra to make yoga accessible to everyone. Come and join Nina on the mat and be prepared to laugh, work hard, get some deep nourishing relaxation and open your heart.

Minica found yoga through her background in dance training. It enabled her to maintain her physical and mental wellbeing in a demanding and competitive industry. After travelling to India to complete her Ashtanga Hatha teacher training in 2013, Minica realised yoga was the route she wanted to take and has since added 100hrs Hatha and 50 hrs rocket to her qualifications. Breathing, alignment, compassion to the body and integrity are her focus. Noticing the similarities between the challenges of life and what happens on a yoga mat, Minica teaches and practices with an open and sincere heart.

Originally from Germany, Bella started her Yoga journey in 2015 when living in Indonesia. She trained first in the innovative form of Aerial Yoga called Fly High Yoga in Bali. She continued her journey and completed her 200hrs Embodied Flow training in Lombok in 2018 and her journey hasn’t stopped since. She is fascinated by the body, mind and spirit connection and deeply believes that they are inseparable. Bella studied 100 hrs Yin & Yoga Nidra with Trimurti in India in 2019 which has changed her style of teaching completely. Diving deeper into the practise of Yoga she keeps exploring psychology and successfully completed her Acceptance Commitment Therapy training in 2021 by Russ Harris and weaves helpful nuggets of knowledge into her classes. Moreover she completed a trauma sensitive training about the polyvagal theory applied to yoga therapy and helps you to understand your nervoussystem better and shows you how to return to a state of ease quicker. Since 2023 she also offers Reiki treatments and qualifies aerial yoga insructors. Bella is devoted to the holistic and therapeutic approach of Yoga and firmly believes Yoga is accessible to everyone. Humour is an important element of her classes and she loves to make a joke every now and then to get you out of the mind back into the body. Her passion for teaching any sort of Yoga stems from a desire to help others to meet themselves fully, just as they are.

Yoga found Kevin while studying kinesiology at TWR in Johannesburg. It wasn’t until he attended his first Kundalini class that he realised the practice went deeper. His journey has led him down several paths including Usui Reiki and Tantric studies but his love for Hatha yoga has never faded. “Yoga helps us discover who and what we are, where we are and where are going. My focus has always been on the individual’s journey through self-knowledge, self acceptance and self-love. As a microcosm of the greater universe, we have duty to take care of ourselves. Otherwise we can never be caretakers of the things we love around us.” Kevin teaches in a Hatha style although he borrows elements from Ashtanga Vinyasa, Kundalini and Jivamukti. His classes are about balance of body, mind and breath and will highlight the advantages of a calm and quiet mind, core strength and poses that focus on flexibility and increased range of motion. Focus will be less on the look of poses and more on the feel of them. We flow, we bend we twist and we breathe! A graduate of YogaLondon’s YTT200 program, Kevin is constantly on the search for knowledge… and a good laugh.

Poppy was led into Pilates through her Sports Massage Therapist career. Having a passion for the human anatomy and the capabilities of the body, Poppy has seen and felt first hand the benefits of Pilates to posture, strength, flexibility and co-ordination and this led to her desire to train as a teacher. Poppy likes to incorporate her enthusiasm and love for Pilates into her classes. Wanting others to feel the benefits of it as she has, confident in her compassion for body limitations. Poppy strives for clients to leave her classes feeling educated, strong, relaxed and with an abundance of body confidence.

Liza has been working in the fitness industry for more than 20 years. She qualified as a Pilates teacher in 2009, having successfully completed her Level 3 Matwork Pilates Diploma, Pilates Advanced REPS Level 3 and Pilates Improvers certifications. She is also a qualified Children’s Dance Teacher and certified to teach Burlesque, Pole Dancing and Salacise. All of which she has ran as successful classes throughout her career. Liza feels that making exercise a low priority in our busy daily routines, can lead to diabetes, obesity joint and back pain which we are seeing is on the increase in todays society. ‘It is essential that we embrace exercise as part of our life style’. With this in mind, Liza works to make her classes fun and exciting whilst teaching important life skills such as body maintenance, self- awareness and confidence.

Holly was a professional dancer for over 15 years. Dance is her passion and has always played a huge part in her life, for work, health and fitness reasons. She transitioned into fitness and nutrition and is a Certified NASM PT, Nutrition Coach, Pre & Post Natal and Menopause Exercise Specialist. She is also a qualified Holistic Life Coach and Mind and Body Practitioner with a holistic fitness-fusion approach to health, fitness and wellbeing. She is a passionate advocate for exercise for enjoyment and believes keeping fit and the process should be fun, something to look forward to and leave you feeling empowered. Her classes have been created by drawing upon her illustrious industry experience to provide creative, engaging and varied sessions that produce long lasting results. Holly is passionate about helping women feel confident, improve their health and fitness and overall mental and physical wellbeing.

At the age of 39 Leigh started to practice yoga, and knew after three months that this was going to be a big thing in her life. Yoga has given her a second purpose, which is to share the practice of yoga. This has grown to help people have more faith in their abilities on the mat, what they are truly capable of when given a chance to move, grow, and to find a moment of calm in the midst of a crazy life! After two years of daily power yoga practice she decided to do her teacher training, and trained with The Yoga People in Ashtanga Vinyasa & Rocket Yoga. Leigh has since completed her Yin training with The Wellbeing Yoga School in London and has grown to love Qigong. During lock down she has been training with Mimi Kuo-Deemer online and slowly started to integrated it into her practices, style and flow. Leigh also has a love of Calisthenics, Muay Thai and swinging a Kettlebell around. Her classes draw heavily from the theme of Sthira Sukham Asanam, strength and ease, which has always resonated with her, finding our strength and ease within our practice and hopefully taking that energy throughout our daily lives.

Fatma has always had a passion for fitness and health. After the birth of her third child, in 2012, she found that the practice of yoga was feeding her soul much more than intense gym sessions, and it was then that she started practising yoga more regularly. With a long teaching background the transition from teaching English to teaching yoga, which started in 2018, felt smooth and fulfilling. Fatma’s love of literature means that she often includes readings at the end of her classes, which always close with a deeply nourishing relaxation. Her classes are often strong and set to eclectic music. She likes to move slowly so that both softness and serenity can be found amongst the strength. After her initial 200 hour YTT, she added an additional 50 hours of Ashtanga training, 30 hours of Hot Static, and a certification in sound healing.

Claire's classes are slow and thoughtful – she vows to forever be a student devouring books and soaking up inspiration, so these Philosophical insights often make an appearance in class in hope it will be soothing and inspiring to the listener. Her first experience of Yoga was Bikram, despite having fears of appearing muddled, she embraced the beginners’ challenges including the momentary dizzy spells and deep rouge glow because the post practice high beamed so brightly out of her being. It had a such a positive effect on both her internal & external worlds, she knew she had to explore this newfound light. So over the years Claire attended a multitude of classes, workshops and events and soon came to the verdict that she desired a deeper understanding of what is at the core of this practice, why it made me feel so physically powerful and how it brought such a lightness to her life and its inevitable challenges. Claire’s first Teacher Training was at Sampoorna Yoga, in Goa, India, in 2018, where she completed a 200hr Ashtanga Vinyasa course that was as intense as it was transformative. Since then she has also completed a Children’s Yoga TT with YogaBeez and a Chair Yoga course with Lakshmi Voelker. Over the 8 years her approach to Yoga has evolved, she feels daily gratitude for finding this path, it has influenced her to be open and to cultivate movement and breathwork rituals that reflect her life phase & pace. With these practices she had a wonderful first pregnancy and birth experience which elevated her sense of self and capabilities, so it only seems natural that her classes have Pranayama & Mindfulness weaved throughout, with a strong focus on awareness of our internal narrative and clearing way to receive our body’s intelligent messages.

Monika finished her sound healing course 6 years ago and has been practicing since. She is also a passionate kundalini yoga teacher and breath work practitioner too. Monika is getting inspired by nature and feels driven to spread peace and tranquillity among humanity.

Shaun, our Tai Chi teacher, started practising Tai Chi and the Li martial arts in 1984 originally under Chee Soo and subsequently under Tony Swanson. He is one of the founding members of the TAO and has been instructing for over twenty five years. He is graded a 5th Tengchi and also qualified in Swedish massage, holding a BCCMA coaching level 3 and a Sports 1st aid qualification. His approach is geared to the capabilities of the individual and strives to help students improve their co-ordination, flexibility and core strength in a gentle and relaxed atmosphere.

Vanessa (‘V’) has been practising Pilates and Yoga as well as general fitness for over 20 years. Her background is in classical ballet as well as gym / fitness training, and she also enjoys calisthenics, martial arts, climbing, dancing and anything else that engages her body and mind. Her passion for Pilates started as a result of a severe back injury - it helped her rehabilitate her body and come back to full fitness after many years of chronic pain. She loves Pilates as it is a great, effective and fun all-body workout suitable for any skill level, age, size and background that can really transform people’s quality of life, increase their strength, flexibility, mobility, posture and body awareness and improve mood and energy levels dramatically, helping participants lead a truly happier, healthier life.