Karen first found the physical practice of yoga in 2003 while transitioning from the stress of a corporate management job to homeschooling her young children. Since then, yoga has helped her through auto-immune disease flare-ups, injuries, surgeries, and depression.

Yoga has helped her to become a calmer, more self-loving, compassionate, and relaxed version of herself and now she is passionate about sharing that gift with others. Guided by a strong sense of interconnectedness and a belief that yoga is for everybody, Karen strives to share compassionate care through yoga and works to understand and acknowledge every individual’s unique needs to make yoga a safe and accessible practice for all of her students.

There are many varied influences on her practice and her teaching style including her mother’s struggle for functional movement, her own injuries, and her experiences of practicing and teaching yoga with a changing body ranging in clothing sizes from a size 4 to a size 20. All of this has only fueled her passion to share yoga with everybody regardless of ability and to meet them where they are within their own capabilities.

Karen has enjoyed teaching yoga since 2005 and has been training yoga teachers around the globe since 2009, starting out as a Master Trainer for YogaFit Worldwide Training Systems. She currently leads YTTs in Virginia Beach, and is a frequent guest teacher at Parmarth Niketan Ashram in India.

When Karen is not on her mat, you can find her traveling the world, spending time with her family, chocolate lab, and cat in her Virginia Beach home, leading yoga retreats, at the gym, kayaking, spending time in the woods, camping, and with her ashram family in India.

Karen is an E-RYT500, RPYT, RCYT, YACEP, the founder and director of Satya Yoga Academy, a contributing author and curriculum consultant for Parmarth Niketan Ahram’s (Rishikesh, India) 200-hour and 300-hour YTTC programs. She is also an Energy Healer, and Reiki Master and holds a BSBA from Old Dominion University and a CGS in Healthcare Policy and Ethics from Regent University.

Karen is the author of several trainings and workshops including:

Satya Yoga Academy’s 200-hour yoga training program; Trauma and Yoga Workshops; Restorative Yoga, and The Effect of Yoga on Heart Failure Patients on Optimal Medical Therapy.