Lead Teacher James Brown
Twenty years of dedicated practice has led James to focus on customizing his teaching to each student, so they can discover their unique highest potential, both physically and non-physically. He began practicing asana in 1993, and started teaching in 1997.
In those first few years he taught private and public classes in DC and was the first Adjunct Professor of Yoga at American University. After teaching the family of Vice President Al Gore privately for a couple of years, the outcome of the 2000 Presidential election spurred him to relocate to LA to teach the Red Hot CHili Peppers, for whom he’d been the private teacher on their “Californication” tour, and whom he continued to teach for ten years after.
In LA, he also began to study with Maty Ezraty, who remains his teacher and mentor. Maty, the founder of YogaWorks, taught James to use deep mental focus to progress through an intensely physical daily asana practice. Upon her departure from YogaWorks, James was one of the teachers she chose to carry on training teachers in the YogaWorks methodology that she had developed for 17 years.
For the next four years, James was a Senior Teacher Trainer at YogaWorks and was a key contributor to the first YogaWorks Teacher Trainer Guide and the Student Manual. He helped to adapt the YogaWorks approach to a global audience as he introduced it around the US, in Asia, and in Australia. Based largely on those foundations, YogaWorks is now the brand leader in yoga teacher training and studios.
Through James’ experiences abroad, he recognized a need to evolve yoga training so that it could reach and relate to modern and diverse asana practitioners, specifically by condensing it to a science of human self-improvement that need not be colored by older cultures or modern trends. Although YogaWorks had become his home, he recognized he’d have to leave the rapidly growing company to work independently with smaller groups, and with more freedom to experiment. So, in 2007, he left YogaWorks and started YogaPoser.
James directs his students to harness and focus their energy so that they can do their best work, which he sees as the heart of yoga practice. In his class, expect to get high quality asana instruction that brings the focus, discipline, and courage needed to reach success, whatever form that may take in your unique personal endeavors.
He has been featured on NPR, in Rolling Stone Magazine, W Magazine, The Washington Post and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.