Erica Merrill

 

Erica Merrill has been practicing yoga for seventeen years and teaching yoga for twelve. She started practicing mainly for the physical challenge and quickly found it transforming her life.  Yoga has helped her learn how to deal with stress in a much calmer way and realize that we can make any situation better or worse by our reaction to it. 

 

Erica's yoga roots stem from Brian Kest in Los Angeles, California.  He inspired a passion that led her to do an Ashtanga teacher training with David Swenson in 2004. In addition, she has completed yogaview's 2006 teacher training and 2010 level 2 teacher training. 

 

Her teaching style is a special blend that includes a light-hearted sense of humor, a vast experience and knowledge of the practice of yoga, a spirit of playfulness that inspires without diminishing and sequencing that weaves the familiar with the unpredictable in a way that requires a fullness of attention.  Erica lives and teaches in Chicago, Illinois.  She feels very grateful that yoga has come into her life and loves to share it with others. 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesse Hozeny

 

Jesse Hozeny is a drummer, music producer, and dj from Chicago. He has practiced yoga since 1999.  In 2002, Jesse was invited to play drums for a weekly yoga class, which quickly evolved into having his own corner of the studio loaded with music production gear: a laptop, a sound system, a synthesizer, and lots of drums. Before long, he started playing for other yoga teachers and other studios around Chicago, including Erica.  

 

In 2005, he released his first yoga music CD,  Niyama, Volumes One and Two, and began playing classes for yoga teachers all over the country.  He released his second CD, Music for Mass Transit, in early 2008.

 

These days, Jesse spends much of his time dj'ing, producing music, and playing drums for his bands, BAATHHAUS and Pink Frost. He plays just one yoga class a week, with Erica, at Lincoln Park Athletic Club in Chicago. 

 

 

 

 

Yoga + Music

 

Jesse started playing live for Erica's yoga classes over seven years ago as an experiment to see if the music could support and enhance the yoga practice by helping students let go and drop into the experience. Jesse draws heavily from his own music for class, and often plays tabla while triggering sounds, loops, and beats. Over the years, he has incorporated more and more music from across genres -- from hip hop to traditional Indian, from indie rock to house music. The goal is to create a soundtrack that rides and supports the energy of the class, but never overpowers it.

 

Jesse's music is the perfect complement to Erica's challenging and intelligent Vinyasa-flow teaching. She is succinct, safe, and clear with her cues, yet her easy-going style creates lots of space for the music, which allows for an interesting co-creative process. Now on their fourth year of leading retreats together, Jesse and Erica strive to create the perfect experience of yoga and music in exquisite surroundings.