Studio Spotlight: Our Seva Team

Have you ever noticed how the yoga shala always looks and feels clean and sparkly?

We have a very special group of yogis and yoginis who are in charge of that! We call them our Seva Team because it’s through their selfless service that we all have such a beautiful environment in which to do our practices. In exchange, our Seva Team takes free classes at Yoga Hawaii. It’s a fantastic exchange that serves us all.

Meet our devoted Seva Team members…

Michal Cordova

Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
~ Joseph Campbell

Michal oscillates between intense periods of “doing” and contemplative times of “being”; within that arc of experience she finds her balance. Yoga is a way for her to access the inner self through the discipline of practice by, “knowing what you need and doing what you must to achieve it.” Michal eventually hopes to sprout her Lotus feet and have them planted firmly on the ground-treading step by step upon the Middle Path: “Yoga is a constant; it is the foundation for everything I want to be in life.”

Alex Dorcean

Love is life and life is love; if you don’t love your
life you’ll never have the life you love.
~ Vudumunki

It could be argued that Alex’s life began in a land far away–but he didn’t really start living until he moved to Hawai’i at the beginning of the millennium. He has dedicated his life to studying the arts of Creative Writing, Astanga Yoga, Ayurvedic Cooking, and Sanskrit–in varying orders, both concurrent and consecutive–and he can usually be found lurking the halls of UH Manoa in search of stray bits of knowledge. Alex studies yoga as a means to connect, to achieve union, with the divinity he sees in everyone: “We are not simply men, nor are we just women, we are all, if we allow ourselves to be: Whole. Human. Beings.”

Kristen Kelly

The body is your temple.
Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.
~ Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar

Kristen is a Marine Biologist employed by the State of Hawai’i to combat Alien Invasive Species. She loves her job and, quite simply, her goal in life is to keep our oceans healthy, clean and beautiful. Kristen strives to achieve that in her own life as well; she sees yoga as a great way to love both your life and your body: “Please care for the earth as much as you care for your own body, they are more connected than you could ever realize! Carpe diem! Seize the day!”

Joey Quitan (Joeygirl)

Educating the mind without educating the
heart is no education at all.
~ Aristotle

Born and raised on Oahu, Joeygirl grew up with love and appreciation for nature and the ocean. That love is continually nurtured by various ocean activities–especially longboarding. She’s lived in Beirut, Paris, Austin, and Laramie; but Hawai’i has always called her back home. Joeygirl realized her true passion while working for a conservation company specializing in Terrestrial Predator Control and Invasive Species Removal; she is now studying Natural Resource and Environmental Management at UH Manoa. She is new to yoga and yoga is new to her–it started out as a school project (in fact, what for her blog debuting soon about that school project!). As a result, Joeygirl has discovered a new way to find peace within herself as she continues to live in harmony with her environment: “Helping to restore the biodiversity of Hawai’i is something worth fighting for. Enjoy the ride!”

If you see one of our Seva Team members on the mat, please let her or him know how much you appreciate her or his service.

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