Your Teachers

Carmen Champion-RYT is the Owner and Director of Main Street Yoga.  She began taking yoga classes at MSY in 2004 while going to college. She found the practice to alleviate anxiety of mind and tension of the body.

If you take a class from Carmen, you will find that she tends to focus a lot of her language around the muscles of the body and how they affect your body and your movement.  You will learn each of the muscle’s role in a posture and how to strengthen and lengthen each one.  Carmen strives to educate and empower students by using each class as an opportunity to learn about themselves.

Carmen has her 200Hour Certification from the Pranakriya School and is a certified Prenatal Yoga Teacher.
She is currently working through her 300 hour certification and has taken the following training programs:
-Understanding the Hatha Yoga Pradipika w. Yoganand Michael Carroll
-Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training w. Jacci Gruniger
-Musculoskeletal Assessment Training w. Tra Kirkpatrick
-Holding Space: Developing Skills for Presence and Touch w. William Hufschmidt
-Deepening the Asana Experience: Meditative Postures 1 w. Yoganand Michael Carroll & Krissy Dopson
-Myofasciae, Prana & the Bandhas w. Jeff Shoaf
-The Universe Inside the Body of a Yogi: A Journey into the Chakras, Granthis and Nadis w. Yoganand Michael Carroll

 

Jenny Williams is a certified 500hour level yoga instructor in the Pranakriya tradition. Her classes are based on body and breath awareness and she encourages students to work at their own pace offering modifications throughout the class. She firmly believes in the process of yoga and its benefits both mentally and physically. Stress is a chronic challenge for most of us in our daily lives and her classes offer an experience to assist in grounding the individual so they can find a peaceful time in their day. Her favorite yoga quote is by one of her teachers, Yoganand Michael Carroll – “ When the body is free of tension, the heart free of fear, and when there is no desire in the mind, then a peace arises from deep within. This peace born out of inner harmony is yoga and all the techniques were made to bring us here.”

Nell Wood started down her yoga path in 2001.  She came to yoga as just another way to exercise but it was quickly revealed to her how yoga is so much more than just a way to exercise your body.  With a dedicated practice she has found that yoga has not only strengthen her body but also her mind and soul.  Strengthen in ways that were never thought possible before she found yoga.Nell became a certified Pranakriya Yoga teacher in 2013 and hopes to share her passion and encourage students to explore the ways yoga can strengthen and open body, mind and soul.

Lisa Knuffman has been practicing yoga since 2001 and completed her 200 hour yoga teacher certification in Pranakriya Yoga in 2009. She is currently working toward her 500 hour certification. A mother of three young girls, Lisa is passionate about sharing yoga with children as well as adults. She believes that yoga can benefit anyone at any stage of life. Lisa encourages her students to truly honor their bodies as they practice and to listen to the innate wisdom they carry inside in order to nourish the soul, calm the mind, and bring joy into the heart.

Sarah Nannen, RYT 200, began her journey with yoga in 2007 in a Southern California Asthanga studio after finally mustering the courage to attend that very first class after several years of ignoring a deep sense of knowing that it had something life changing to offer. That decision became a regular studio practice where Sarah found peace and stress relief, a beautiful physical compliment to her running hobby and an exploration of her higher self within a hectic military lifestyle. During her four pregnancies in six years, Sarah turned to a prenatal yoga practice which opened her path to finally connecting with her own feminine divine and mothering intuition and allowed her to physically strengthen her body for the transformative experience of childbirth. As a writer and solo momma to four little ones, a personal yoga practice offers Sarah a delicious path to building physical strength and a coveted mental dip into the peace and solitude within. Through yoga, Sarah has learned to practice swadyaya (self observation without judgement) that has shifted the way she lives and loves and sits with her experiences. In 2015, Sarah completed her 200 hour yoga teacher certification within the Pranakriya tradition and is grateful for the opportunity to share with her classes the empowerment, aliveness and authentic connection to self that develops within the practice of yoga.

Pamela Harris is a fun-loving and adventurous individual who has dedicated herself to raising three wonderful children. She developed her passion for yoga 15 years ago when she attended her first yoga class at Living Arts Yoga Studio in Champaign, Illinois. She attended classes there regularly and has been a dedicated yogi ever since. She is a graduate of Midwest College of Cosmetology, where she graduated with a grade-point average of 4.0, became a licensed esthetician, and worked at Hair Designs at Knollwood in Champaign for three years. She then started her own business out of her home and, needless to say, she gives a great facial! Pam is also a certified level-one yoga instructor through Yogafit and is also working toward her 200-hour teacher training at Bodhi Hot Yoga Studio in Stuart, Florida. Her other hobbies include reading, running, and going to the beach. She also considers herself to be somewhat of a wine connoisseur.

Karen Canham, E-RYT Karen Canham greatest joy comes from teaching Yoga. The passion for sharing it’s benefits with others stems from her own life experience with its power to create space free from obstacles in your own body and mind to live. She encourages growth of the spiritual self through meditation and the psychology of yoga. She teaches children in an underserved area on the southwest side of Chicago, where she is grateful to be given the opportunity to teach children very important lessons and provide them with tools to promote inter peace and help them in their everyday lives. Karen is a member of the Yoga Alliance (E-RYT) and completed her 200 hour RYT in 2012.

Brittany McCready is a 200 RYT with Yoga Alliance. She has practiced various styles of yoga for over 10 years. Before she started practicing Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga three years ago, yoga was an inconsistent hobby, today yoga is part of her daily life. Realizing that she wanted to deepen her practice and learn more about yoga philosophy, she completed her 200hr yoga teacher certification in May 2015 at Tapas Yoga Shala in Rock Island, IL.

Brittany has a passion for teaching to spread her joy of yoga to others. Her classes are a modern approach to traditional postures which are appropriate for all levels and will leave you feeling invigorated yet centered. Her private sessions offer a relaxed atmosphere for students to explore postures and receive one on one adjustments.

 

Hannah Liechty is a registered yoga teacher at the 200 hour level. She completed her training at Ahimsa Yoga studio in Ithaca NY. She began taking yoga at Main Street Yoga in 2014 in order to help with some anxiety and fell in love with the practice, she continues to enhance her love and understanding of yoga. Currently she is a first year student at Illinois State University. In her free time she enjoys doing yoga, being with friends and taking long walks outside.