Why I take teaching personally, and where to find me doing it.

My teacher T.K.V. Desikachar always reminded us that yoga is relationship. He deepened this further with one line I've never forgotten: "For the teacher, the object of meditation is the student." The technique, the postures, the breath — all of it in service to that one thing. The teacher sees the student, the student sees the teacher, and both are changed by the encounter. This flow runs in both directions, continuously, like a living organism.

This is the quality I reach for in every class, every one-on-one session. There are things that only happen when we share a space. The spontaneous touch a teacher offers because something in a student's body communicates wordlessly. The energy of a room breathing together, the collective exhale when everyone finally settles. The question someone asks because the space felt safe — a question that changes everyone in it, including the teacher.

Since 2011, I've been building online learning experiences for people I rarely meet in person. I value this work and aspire to carry that same quality of relationship into it — that living flow Desikachar placed at the center of everything.

Since the pandemic of 2020, I understand with greater clarity than ever what shared space makes possible, and what it costs to be without it. Showing up in person is a different choice than it used to be. You're no longer here because it's your only option. You come in search of something specific — that living current between student and teacher, the thing that changes both.

My long-time friend Andrew Tanner embodies this same spirit. He founded the Berkshire Yoga Festival and the American Yoga Council — two ventures I've supported from the beginning, not out of obligation, but because I believe in what he's building and how he builds it. Andrew works with a kind of quiet dedication that I deeply respect. This June I'll be returning to the Berkshires to teach at BYF — back to a place that has always felt like home, and to the community of friends and colleagues who make it that way.

I'll be presenting five sessions at the Berkshire Yoga Festival, June 11–14, at Jiminy Peak Resort in Hancock, MA. BYF is one of the few large-scale yoga gatherings still running, and it draws a genuinely strong community of teachers. You can browse the full lineup here and find my sessions by clicking on my photo. Use promo code JOINME for $50 off a Multi-Day Pass.

A personal highlight will be a Sunday session I'm co-leading with Lauri Nemetz — "Practice Beneath the Skin" — which offers a taste of the integration work we bring to our anatomy labs together.

That collaboration has deep roots. In November 2020, at the height of lockdown, Lauri, Lydia Mann and I led our first dissection-based workshop in San Diego. Looking back, I recognize what it took from everyone involved just to make it happen. We live-streamed and recorded twenty hours of that lab, and I'm sharing a brief excerpt from the first evening below.

The experience of teaching together was rich enough that the three of us formed KNM Labs — Kaminoff, Nemetz, Mann — which has since grown into four week-long cadaver dissection intensives at the Institute for Anatomical Research in Colorado Springs. Our fifth lab takes place August 11–15, and it's open to anyone with a sincere interest in exploring human anatomy, structure, movement, and breath from the inside out. Previous labs have attracted massage therapists, dancers, movement teachers of all sorts, and artists. Please let us know if you would like to learn more.