At Pendleton Yoga Center, our teachers are excited to help expand your mind-body practices!
We are…
Amoena Norcross
Amoena’s first exposure to yoga occurred as a child, watching her mother moving in and out of poses. As an adult, Amoena began a regular yoga practice in 2018 and through her yoga practice, Amoena was able to reduce stress and decrease the effects of emotional trauma. In 2022, Amoena discovered a yoga teacher training opportunity at Anderson Yoga Center and earned her RYT200 Yoga Teacher certification in 2023.
Amoena enjoys teaching mindful and gentle vinyasa-based classes and incorporates yin yoga, restorative yoga, meditation, and pranayama into her own practice. Additionally, Amoena enjoys beachcombing, hiking, camping, and foraging for mushrooms. Prior to being a yoga instructor, Amoena spent 30+ years in higher education, both as a teacher and an administrator.
Beth Davenport
Beth teaches Flow Foundations on Mondays at 4:30 p.m. Expect a scalable class with incorporating both ease and challenge.
Gary Carbone
Gary Michaelangelo Carbone has been training in Tai Chi, Qigong, and Chinese Martial Arts since 1983 and has been teaching professionally since 1995. He is grateful and honored to share this beautiful system with others.
Gary teaches Tai Chi & Qigong at Pendleton Yoga Center.
Karen Sonnenwald
Karen Sonnenwald is a woman on a mission. It is her firm belief that taking care of oneself is not a luxury but a necessity, especially for women! It is through her own personal journey that she discovered the power of meditation, yoga, and the chakra system early on in life. She has studied many spiritual traditions that allow her to form a daily practice that is unique and welcoming to individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. She holds a BA in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Montclair State University. She studied MBSR at Ramapo University and Yin yoga at Jaipure yoga. She taught meditation and held labyrinth walks at Cedar Crest Active Retirement Community in Pompton Plains, NJ.
Karen enjoys being outdoors, taking photos of nature, practicing qigong (a recent addition to her daily practices), listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and sitting in quiet contemplation with her cat, Shakti.
Karen offers Reiki Trainings, is available for private Reiki and meditation sessions, and once a month teams up with Christy to offer a Sound with Reiki class at PYC.
Casey Certain
Casey is trained in hypnotherapy, meditation, breathwork, yoga, aromatherapy, auriculotherapy, among other modalities.
Casey's journey with yoga began when she was 15. Throughout her years of practice, she has adopted the philosophy that the teachings and practices found in yoga support an awakening into a more compassionate and balanced state of being that supports health and longevity through alignment of mind, body, and spirit.
Since 2016, Casey has led various yoga and meditation classes for youth and adults as a path for pursuing mental, physical, and emotional health and wellness. Her calm energy and ability to create safe space make meditation, pranayama and restorative yoga her specialties. It is her greatest desire that those who join her for any session walk away having fully dropped into the body while building awareness of their breath so that they feel empowered and at peace.
Working to explore, record, and share what the Animals, Plants, and Land wish to share and teach, she now offers private sessions and retreats as an Integrative Healing Arts Practitioner at her homestead in Walhalla, South Carolina with her husband David. You can learn more about her homestead and healing arts practice at https://www.reidhomesteadwalhalla.com/
Casey teaches Slow Flow Yoga and Restorative Bliss Yoga at Pendleton Yoga Center.
Christy Williamson
Christy is a life-long musician who seeks to create an environment that offers participants a space to unplug and restore a sense of harmony and balance to mind and body. She has played guitar for more than 30 years, been a songwriter for 25 years, and she has taught people of all ages to play over the last 15 years. She teaches Simply Sound and other Sound classes at PYC, and she also offers private Sound Healing and Mindful-Life Coaching. Visit her web site at https://www.intunerhythm.com/
Lee Ann Brown-Prostko
Lee Ann teaches Yoga for Any Body and Chair Yoga.
Lynne McSweeney
Lynne is a versatile yoga teacher, leading classes ranging from Flow Foundations to Strength-Balance-Flexibility to Vinyasa Flow. She has been practicing and teaching yoga for over 20 years, and she is looking forward to sharing this practice with you!
Melissa Powell
Melissa is the owner of Pendleton Yoga Center. She has been practicing yoga since 1995 and teaching since 2016. She enjoys offering yoga classes that are accessible for all bodies, believing wholeheartedly in TKV Desikachar’s assertion: Anybody can breathe. Therefore anybody can practice yoga.
Melissa teaches Yoga for Any Body and Chair Yoga.
Sarah Stokowski
Sarah is a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) with a Ph.D. in Sport Studies from the University of Tennessee. She completed her yoga teacher training in 2018 at the Yoga Deza Institute in Fayetteville, Arkansas and is trained in power yoga, yoga sculpt, and yin yoga. She teaches Vinyasa and Power Sculpt at PYC.
Sarah often shares inspiring quotes with her students, such as, "I am possible" and "You’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself." As Glinda the Good Witch reminds Dorothy in *The Wizard of Oz*, the power lies within ourselves. For students who struggle to find answers externally or seek external validation, this message resonates deeply. Sarah reminds us that not only do we have the power within to find our Crow pose, but we also have the power within to find our own way in life.
When she’s not practicing yoga or binge-watching the latest series on Netflix, Sarah is an Associate Professor of Athletic Leadership at Clemson University, researching student-athlete development. A native of Aurora, Illinois, Sarah and her partner, Joey, reside in Pendleton with their two dogs and four cats.
Tracy Ceres
Tracy has been practicing yoga for over a decade. She did her yoga teacher training in Asheville, NC at Asheville Yoga Center and has been teaching since 2018. Both yoga and wellness are integral parts of her daily life. Tracy believes moving your body daily, feeding your body healthy, nutritious plant-based food, and being mindful and intentional in your life choices lead to a happier, healthier life.
When she’s not teaching or coaching, you may find her with her horse, Romeo, trying out new plant-based recipes, reading, art journaling, or in her garden.
It is her passion, challenge and goal, to help women get to a place where they are happy and healthy, bringing them back to a place of joy and love for themselves as the beautiful people that we are! Find out more about Tracy’s wellness coaching at https://simplitracy.com/
We want mind-body practices to be accessible to everyone, and we intend for our studio to be a place of peace and safety. We welcome BIPOC and LGBTQIA students and teachers as well as people of diverse religions, abilities, and lifestyles. We expect everyone to work together to create a welcoming, discrimination-free, and healing environment for all.
