Organizational Staff

Instructors

Kendra Kurihara
Executive Director

Kendra spent her early childhood hiking and exploring Yosemite with her family. This seed blossomed into a career in 1991 as an outdoor, environmental, and adventure educator. She has since led trips from Yosemite to Colorado, and Oregon to Patagonia, primarily for Outward Bound and Yosemite Institute. For many years she lived in Leadville, CO where she created an outdoor leadership program for immigrant youth and completed a Master's degree in Nonprofit Management from Regis University. Subsequently, she served as a Program Director for Outward Bound, developing courses for diverse populations from leadership groups to adjudicated youth, as well as courses for the deaf in ASL, Iraqi veterans and survivors of violence.

Kendra finds joy and serenity in her life on long trail runs in the mountains and rock climbing with friends including her husband Rob Dillon. Growing, preparing and eating food is a close second favorite pastime.
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Arin Trook
Program Director

Arin is thrilled to join Balanced Rock after several years of wandering the twisting paths of teaching and learning. He brings a passion for deep community, explorations of the wild world, complex yoga practice, andtransformative education into the organization. Home over the past few years has taken many different forms, from homesteading in Castle Valley, Utah to living in the Sieben Linden Ecovillage in central Germany. He is a California native and has roots deep in the mountains, deserts, and seasides of this amazing place.

Arin has been working as a professional educator for the past 15 years is a wide variety of contexts. The past 8 years have found him teaching with various university field school programs in Alaska, the Colorado Plateau, Southern India, Mexico, and Calfornia. He has led mountaineering and rock climbing programs in the Southern Rocky Mountains for the Outward Bound School. He has taught and studies yoga through a complexity of lenses. His yoga practice blends strong asana work with sacred song and breath practice. Arin feels blessed to be able to contribute his passions to the vision of Balanced Rock.
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Instructors

Mary-Laurence Bevington
Mary-Laurence Bevington, a.k.a. Mary, lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she practices with an art tribe lead by the world-renowned Barbara Dilley. She also performs, writes, and teaches yoga, meditation and Pilates. She has been an outdoor educator since 1988, primarily for Outward Bound. She has an MFA in Contemporary Performance (Naropa University) and a BA in Creative Writing (Colorado College). Mary revels in the connections between nature, breath, movement, and community. She believes in her heart of hearts that strengthening these links can further our human potential and heal the world.
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Jen Bowen-Meno
Jen Bowen-Meno has been living in Yosemite since 1996, when she traveled to the Sierra to work as a trail chef, cooking outdoors in remote backcountry locations. In 2001 Jen became the house chef of the Inn at Erna's Elderberry House, in Oakhurst, CA, where she immersed herself in the art of fine cooking. She has worked as a personal chef and cooking teacher for local residents. In 2005, through shared passion for local food, Jen and Brenda created a unique catering business that emphasizes using fresh local ingredients and sharing their knowledge with clients and event guests alike. Jen currently resides in El Portal with her husband and their two boys. She works with children at the local elementary school, teaches yoga, and continues working as a chef, focusing on sharing benefits of choosing a local diet.
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Dennis Eagan
Dennis has been a wilderness guide and outdoor educator for over three decades. His guiding experience ranges from the Artic to Baja and from the summit of Denali to the depths of Grand Canyon. He has been a student of yoga for twenty years and has been teaching for ten. Currently he directs the Advanced Study/Teacher Training Programs at the Yoga & Movement Center in Walnut Creek and the Bo Tree Yoga Studio in Davis. Dennis offers workshops and wilderness retreats throughout the west, from Alaska to Mexico. He is a contributor to Prana, the online newsletter of the Green Yoga Association, and is writing a book about the Gulf Coast of Alaska from the perspective of a kayaker.
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Schuyler Greenleaf
Schuyler first visited Yosemite in 2001 on the tail of a lucky wind. After accepting a research position in Yosemite Valley, she moved site unseen from the granite of coastal Maine to the granite of the Sierras and found herself living on the banks of the mighty Merced River. El Portal offered up its jewels of comfort, the river sang its enchantment, and the brilliance of Yosemite flashed its magic. She paid attention, fell in love, and hung up her gypsy shoes.

After three years of studying the park's black bears and earning an MS in Wildlife Biology, Schuyler settled into the rhythm of Sierra seasons and continues to thrive on the rich community and humbling grandeur of the landscape and people near her home. She has studied a variety of yogic styles over the past 10 years, and while her tastes have become more refined, she's not picky about where, when and with whom she practices, so long as the breath flows and senses open. Her most lasting commitment is to keep weaving the tapestry of life so that its colors are vibrant and alive, its texture soft and supple, and its fibers strong. Flexibility of body, mind and spirit and the balancing act of life are especially important to her now as she embarks on the journey of motherhood. She and her husband, Brian, are entertaining newcomer Wilde, who turns two on New Year's Eve. Together they love backyard adventure, harmony, cold river plunges, and the smell of chalk on calloused palms. Schuyler is thrilled to be able to contribute to Balanced Rock and honored to work with such an inspired crew.
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Chelsea Griffie
As a young woman, Chelsea dreamed of the mountains and camping. Unfortunately, she lived in suburban Chicago and her family just did not do that sort of thing. Chelsea began rock climbing in 1993 and backpacking as a means of getting to backcountry rock. She was soon hiking and climbing every weekend.

A yogini for over 12 years, Chelsea has practiced regularly with Rusty Wells and Bryan Kest, and studied Acro Yoga. She has recently completed 100 hours of Yoga Teacher Training with Rusty Wells. Photos of Chelsea periodically crop up in Patagonia catalogs, Essence Magazine, and Sports Illustrated Women. She is also proud to be included in Black & Brown Faces in America's Wild Places, Dudley Edmonson's book by about Afro American outdoors enthusiasts. Chelsea moved to Yosemite in 2001 to be close to that rock climbing Mecca. She was the Business Manager of Yosemite Guides, a local guide service and worked in the office of the Colorado Mountain School. She is currently the program manager at BAWT, Bay Area Wilderness Training.
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Nadine Johnson
Nadine has been living as an urban yogi - working full-time and teaching yoga while maintaining a strong practice and balanced life.  She started teaching in 2004 after completing teacher trainings with Clayton Horton at Greenpath Yoga and David Swenson.  She continues her education through workshops and trainings with senior teachers such as David Williams, Richard Freeman, Jonny Kest, Ana Forrest and Sarah Powers.
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Eliza Kerr
Eliza is passionate about making the world a better place through cultivating personal balance and awareness and facilitating others doing the same. For Eliza, connecting with the natural world and yoga have been two powerful forces for growth and peace. In her work she aims to share these experiences so that others may reap the benefits.
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Anna Landauer
Anna Landauer, licensed acupuncturist/herbalist, dancer, performer, outdoor athlete, and educator brings you her passion for inspired living. She has spent her life exploring ways to connect with the nature of life energy (the transformative and healing experience of union with the divine) and building deep presence and awareness through the body as nature. Anna's teaching expertise stems from extensive studies and professional experience as an experiential educator and healthcare practitioner. Anna holds a Master's Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Bachelor's Degree in Outdoor Education and Transformational Art. She is committed to spreading the spirit of wellness.
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Noah Mazé
Noah Mazé is recognized in the yoga community as one of the most advanced and proficient practitioners and teachers of Anusara Yoga^®, and is widely sought out as a teachers' teacher. Noah was born into a household of yogis, was raised with the practices and traditions of yoga, and his teaching style is expressive of the depth of his knowledge and lifelong experience in the principles and practices.

In addition to studying closely with Anusara Founder John Friend for many years, Noah studies with Professor Douglas Brooks, one of the world's foremost scholars of the Srividya traditions of the Hindu Tantra. Noah has also studied extensively with Richard Freeman in the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga tradition. Noah also serves on the Anusara Yoga^® curriculum committee and is a Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher.

In Noah's classes, yoga philosophy, myths, and stories weave together with asana, pranayama and meditation to create a powerful and transformative environment.

Noah lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Tracy, and their new baby, Madeline.
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Penny Otwell
Penny Otwell has lived in Yosemite since 1964 and has hiked and backpacked many miles over the years. She is a self-taught artist who has been drawing and sketching outdoors for 44 years, and painting professionally for 20 years. Otwell's teaching style is non-threatening and generous with the goal of inspiring others to make art. Her work is shown at The Ansel Adams Gallery (Yosemite), Williams Gallery West (Oakhurst), and The First Street Gallery (Turlock).

Website: www.pennyotwell.com

Blog: www.pennyotwellpaintings.blogspot.com

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Kay Peterson
Kay Peterson has been on an active meditation practice path for the last 12 years. Initially a practicing psychotherapist, she began contributing her skills in supporting individual transformation and creative group facilitation to the outdoor experiential education field in 1997. She was trained to give meditation instruction in the Shambhala Tradition in 2004 and has since been leading programs that offer the opportunity for meditation inspired by nature. She is currently on the Board of Director's for Northern California Shambhala.
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Liesa Scholze
Yoga teacher Liesa Scholze is a life-long student of Babaji's Kriya Yoga. Growing up on the East German-Polish border, Liesa has a strong background in teaching women's and children's yoga classes in diverse cultural environments. She is currently writing her thesis about yoga in the practice of sustainable social work.

Liesa has lived and worked in the ecovillages and intentional communities of Sieben Linden in Germany and Auroville in south India. Her passion in yoga blends a strong asanas practice with a deep level of awareness, relaxation and pranayama (yogic breathing practices). She is also a passionate fan and leader of shared sacred song and chanting through regular kirtan practice.

She lives with her husband and her seven year old son in Yosemite.
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Erik Sloan
Erik Sloan is a man who radiates both peace and passion. Erik lives for the thrill of big wall climbing in Yosemite and has spent months of his life of the walls of the Valley. When not living in the vertical environment, he often teaches yoga, blending current astrological (sidereal) insights with basic fundamentals from the Anusara and Iyengar lineage. He brings a wonderful blend of humor, intensity, and philosophy to all of his teaching and practice. Erik is currently working on a comprehensive website/guidebook to Yosemite's big wall climbs.
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Heather Sullivan
Heather is one of the founders of Balanced Rock and currently supports the mission by serving on the advisory board, yoga instructor, and field instructor. Her yoga classes blend ashtanga flow, Iyengar alignment, and a strong connection to the rhythms and patterns of the natural world. Recent endeavors to live sustainably and in closer harmony with the earth include beekeeping, gardening, processing & sourcing local food and riding her bike everywhere. She is also on the marketing team for Downtown Yoga, instructs yoga, and has a monthly workshop entitled, "Nourishing the Soul" which blends her passions of yoga, creative writing, connecting community and healthy local food. She is a Shiatsu massage therapist, works as a doula (birth assistant), is an avid bread baker, and if there is extra time enjoys rock-climbing, skiing, mountain rambling, music, and playing with children.
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Lindsay Wilson
Since 2000, Lindsay has been working in social services, cultivating community participation and personal empowerment through social and environmental awareness. She has worked with grassroots and non-profit organizations. Through her work with at-risk populations, she has developed a deep understanding of how to care for the self in order to skillfully care for others.

In the spirit of self-care and self-knowledge, she believes that local actions can improve the global atmosphere, reducing internal conflict by increasing the self's perception of connection and abundance. Lindsay has a background in environmental education, yoga, meditation, and social service work. She has a dedicated yoga practice and teaches in the Anusara and Hatha lineages in San Francisco.
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