Susan Aharona Shackman
Aharona has been practicing Ashtanga yoga under the guidance of Nancy Gilgoff since 2003. Nancy was one of the first Westerners to learn the method of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga from Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, and to bring that tradition home to the West; and Aharona teaches in the traditional, hands-on style that Nancy inherited from her close connection with Pattabhi Jois.
Originally Aharona began a daily practice of Ashtanga simply as a means of keeping herself in shape for her greatest passion (and first spiritual practice), West African dance. Ashtanga particularly appealed to her as a vigorous practice, as a traditional system, and as a set series conducive to home practice. It wasn't long before yoga became much more than a way to keep fit, and after a year of practicing mostly on her own, a few months after meeting Nancy at one of her workshops, Aharona traveled to Maui to live and study with Nancy Gilgoff. There she learned the intermediate series, and she soon found that all the back-bending in this series finally cured the chronic back pain that she had been dealing with over the preceding four years. Already she felt inspired to someday teach and share this healing practice, and in the spring of 2004 she attended Nancy's Primary Series Adjustment Clinic.
Seeking further explorations into the traditions and philosophies behind her practice of asana, pranayama, and meditation, in 2005 Aharona completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training at the Mount Madonna Center in California, where she was gratefully blessed with the teachings and presence of Baba Hari Dass. She is also grateful to have been able to attend workshops led by both the late Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his son Manju Jois. Most of all she is grateful for the opportunity to have her practice continue to deepen under the loving guidance of Nancy and her assistant Casie Newhouse as she has continued to make extended trips to Maui.
Aharona is also a massage therapist and a Reiki practitioner, and she feels that her background in massage now informs her understanding of her students' bodies as well as her hands-on adjustments. Besides yoga, dance, and bodywork, Aharona's other main practices include writing and dietary cleansing. She is currently finishing off her first book, a memoir about her time in West Africa. Her next book concerns her experiences with dietary cleansing, which she has been researching and experimenting with for over ten years, during that time having passed back and forth through periods of vegetarianism, veganism, whole foods, raw foods, "mucusless" diet, fasting, fruitarianism, liquitarianism, and "living on light." She is passionate about the transformative power of dietary cleansing and is also available for counseling on these matters. Aharona firmly believes in the power of maintaining a yoga practice and a clean diet, as well as a joyous pursuit of right livelihood, to achieve an optimum state of health.
