Richelle Ricard
@margaretandbeauphoto
LMT, The Yoga Engineer
Richelle is equal parts teacher and healer, scientist and mystic. In her 30 years of professional practice, she has worked in sports medicine, therapeutic and clinical massage, energetic bodywork, yoga, meditation and business. She has taught in massage schools, yoga studios, and living rooms. Her highest goal is to help others live their best, healthiest and most fulfilling lives in both heart and body. Her clients and students range from professional athletes to CEO’s to stay-at-home parents and college students.
She believes it’s her purpose in this Life to help students better understand their own movements, and to help yoga teachers learn the anatomical context and vocabulary to better communicate sound alignment principles. Richelle uses myriad tools to assess and access a person’s own potential, and tries never to take herself too seriously. Her classes follow the rhythms of the moon and stars, environment, social energies, and her own moods. You’ll breathe in new ways, you’ll make some funny noises, you’ll probably giggle, and you may even weep. She aims to find the Nature of the moment and immerse in it fully and attentively.
Currently she resides in Portland, OR with her beloved and supportive husband, James, and their sweet little mutt-dog, Newt. She has written The Yoga Engineer’s Manual (among other things), is teaching yoga, offering therapeutic healing sessions, developing high-level trainings for teachers and students, and forever remodeling her house.
Elena cheung
RYT, Certified Badass
Rock climber. Taco eater. Musician. Video gamer. Many words that described Elena for most of her life. Yoga practitioner was thrown into the mix in 2010, while pursuing her double degree in Biology and Psychology at the University of Washington.
Over time, yoga became something much more profound – it became a way to get in touch with her inner state of being. Elena completed her yoga teacher training in the spring of 2015, and suffice to say, her science background could not help but move to the forefront as she dove headlong into the yoga world. Since her initial training, Elena has studied with a myriad of renowned teachers, but found Richelle’s Yoga Engineer method to resonate the most.
Elena’s classes are highly influenced by the Yoga Engineer principles, and provide a unique experience that encourages the deep work. She is a fun-loving and expressive yoga teacher whose teaching style is thoughtful, sustainable, and detail-oriented (and sometimes sassy). Her face glows with obvious delight when she speaks to the minutiae of the yoga asanas in her classes, where she hopes to inspire her students to see in themselves the possibilities that come with self-exploration in both the physical level, and in the soul.
Outside of the yoga studio, Elena can be found in the chalky halls of her favorite climbing gym, running around in the mountains, making shapes in acro, or snuggled up at home with her boo thang playing an inordinate amount of video games.
Amanda mitchell
E-RYT-200, RYT-500
Amanda's motto around yoga is, at its essence, "take it off the mat." She firmly believes in yoga as an opportunity to look yourself in the eyes, see who and where you are, and learn something that you can apply – both to your physical and your spiritual/mental experience.
Amanda first came to yoga in 2012, and used her practice to work through an intense mental and emotional life transition. In short, it changed her life; she enrolled in a teacher training program in 2013, completing her RYT-500 hour program in 2014.
It was a 2015 anatomy class where Amanda first connected with Richelle of The Yoga Engineer. Learning in-depth about how to incorporate science, individual anatomy, and the ancient practice of yoga in a clear way, sparked a new passion and strongly influenced how and what she teaches today. She uses clear language and constant body awareness to develop students’ ability to work with their unique, individual variances.
Through meditation, brief philosophy explanations, and a large dose of humor, Amanda’s classes are more than physical exercise. That said, her teachings do have a strong alignment focus, and incorporate breath and introspection. Her style is slow and deliberate, with a rich attention to detail that will deepen the experience of any student, no matter how long they’ve been practicing.
Amanda brings a sense of grace, joy, authenticity, and delight to her teaching, as well as to the rest of her life. She’s currently planning her wedding and enjoying playing grown-up with her fiancé in Seattle. In her down time, she also reads, crochets, cross-stitches, and over-invests in her Sims. This year she’s planning on busting out her roller skates more often and hitting the Burke-Gilman trail in the sunshine.
