Meet the teachers
Emily Gilchrist
I have been teaching yoga for over 20 years and have walked this path with devotion since first discovering it in 2000, completing my initial teacher training in 2004. It has taken me all this time to feel the quiet readiness to step forward as a teacher of teachers. Though I still consider myself very much a student, with so much more to learn and unfold, I now feel deeply supported by three wonderful co-teachers who will be part of this journey.
I am truly excited to share the many tools, practices, and teachings that have shaped my own path, weaving them together into a course that I hope will empower and uplift all who join. It feels like the moment I’ve been patiently waiting for a natural unfolding, and I cannot wait to walk this journey alongside everyone who comes.
Yoga has been the greatest gift of my life. Its wisdom and practices have guided me home to a place of peace, joy, and deeper connection. My heartfelt wish is that those who join this course will leave feeling nourished, inspired, and awakened to a new way of seeing themselves and the world around them.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.
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The journey so far…
I hope what you read will inspire and give you a sense of trust in who I am and what I offer. My name is Emily Gilchrist and I am a mother, yoga teacher, energy healer, massage therapist, mindfulness coach, fun loving, creative, cheeky catalyst for transformation and positive change.
I am devoted
to the path of creating sacred, safe, loving and nurturing spaces where people can come, unravel, and be free to show up without apology, exactly as they are. I believe in being authentic and sharing the imperfect, perfect truth of who I am and life, so we can learn to truly accept and embrace the whole of who we all are.
How it began
I became involved in the art of healing over 20 years ago, after my own personal journey in Yoga had started. Yoga found me at a crucial turning point in my life back in 2001, whilst living in India.
It was through my own trauma and being left with little confidence in myself and who I was that got me on the mat! It didn’t take long before I noticed the profound benefits Yoga had started to have on my overall state of mind and wellbeing, that I soon found myself on the way to the ashram, in south India, embarking on my first TTC, where the course of my path would change forever! I left knowing it was my mission to share this medicine wherever my heart led me.
At 17 I left home with a strong desire for freedom and discovery as well as spiritual hunger. My life took me on some wonderful, painful twists and turns resulting in living and travelling in a wide variety of countries. My work diverted from waitressing, sales work, acting, wholesaler of clothes, you name it, I tried it and finally found my path in Yoga. I have spent half my adult life living abroad, between; Spain, France, Dubai, India and Ethiopia, which have all played a huge role and impacted the way I teach and who I am today.
During my time in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, I set up a karma yoga project, ‘Yoga in Ethiopia’. Here I initiated and organised a collaboration of local art therapists and international Yoga teachers, to offer courses in local women’s shelters and Juvenile centres. I also set up one of the first Yoga studios and started running retreats, in support of the local expat community.
My work in Ethiopia gave me huge inspiration, passion and affirmation regarding the importance and power of community that is created within the retreat space, so much so that I have continued to love and thrive from running retreats ever since!
I currently reside in Forest Row in the South East of England, amongst a beautiful community of kindred spirits, with my partner Ben and my son Isaac, where I also continue to curate well-being retreats, run classes, workshops and corporate sessions.
I thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about me. And if our paths haven’t already crossed, I hope that one day they will.
Guy Donahaye
I first met Guy and his beautiful family a few years ago in Forest Row, the place I now call home and where he also grew up, and I felt deeply privileged to meet him. From our very first meeting, I was inspired by his wisdom, humility, and the depth of his lifelong journey in yoga. It is a true honour to now welcome him to this training.
Guy has been teaching Ashtanga Yoga for over 30 years and has studied extensively in India at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, KPJAYI, and the Sadvidya Foundation in Mysore. He is one of the few students to receive advanced teaching certification directly from Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. He is the author of the influential book Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students. Having lived in New York for over two decades, he was also the director of the Ashtanga Yoga Shala, where he taught daily Mysore-style practice. Guy has shared his work on various podcasts, including: https://www.keenonyoga.com/podcast/podcast-guy-donahaye/
We are truly fortunate to have Guy in this course. I feel deeply inspired knowing he is on the team, as I know I will be both giving and receiving so much on this journey with you. Guy will guide parts of the yoga philosophy modules online and will also join us in person during the second intensive week to offer special workshops on the art of adjustments.
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Guy has been teaching Ashtanga Yoga for over 30 years. He has studied extensively in India at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, the KPJAYI and the Sadvidya Foundation in Mysore. He is one of a few students to receive advanced teaching certification from Pattabhi Jois and is author of the influential book Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of his Students.
Having lived in New York for two and a half decades, where he was the director of the Ashtanga Yoga Shala teaching daily Mysore Style Ashtanga, he currently resides in Israel and continues to teach workshops internationally on asana, pranayama, meditation and yoga philosophy and travels annually to India to continue his studies with Dr KLS Jois (Acharya). In addition to teaching ashtanga in the tradition of KP Jois, he also teaches a gentler style of practice learned from Acharya that integrates asana, pranayama, mudra and meditation.
Why I Came to Yoga
I can trace my interest in yoga to a time in my childhood. When I was six years old, my family moved from the grey suburbs of London to the Sussex countryside. Our back garden opened onto fields, forests, lakes and rivers - and this became my playground. Over the next few years I would spend hours every day climbing trees, playing in the river or sit fishing by the lake. Being out in nature, I remember having no clear feeling of a boundary between myself and my environment - it was as if my mind merged with nature. I often experienced a profound sense of peace, happiness, heightened awareness and vitality.
Around the age of ten, as my critical thinking began to mature and I started to read my father’s newspaper, I became aware of man’s potential for evil. Up until this point I had been innocent, but now I began to read about human atrocities, murder, famine, etc. and this came as an enormous shock to my system. As if overnight, my wonderful experiences in nature vanished. I had woken up out of my dream but the reality which now began to dawn on me seemed so much less real, so much less vital - and so miserable! It was as if I had experienced the fall of Adam from the garden of Eden and I had woken up to the nature of suffering.
Looking back, I believe at times I had been experiencing a kind of samadhi: I often felt a deep sense of peace and happiness. But losing this experience was a heavy blow that caused me a great deal of pain - this prompted the beginning of my search for yoga: I wanted to re-connect with what I had experienced previously.
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During my travels in India, I had the privilege of learning from many wonderful teachers in the diverse but interconnected yogic arts of Ayurveda, Sanskrit, music, philosophy etc., but in 1993, I met the man who could satisfy all my questions and has remained an enduring guide all these years: Dr KLS Jois, "Acharya". https://sadvidyafoundation.org/the-sacred-tradition-of-yoga/
Although Pattabhi Jois gave me a foundation in yoga practice, the understanding of the true meaning and purpose of yoga came through Acharya: yoga is not something to strive for or attain, it is something intimate and internal, something that is uncovered and that happens naturally when the conditions are right.
Yoga practice returns us to the natural state in which the innate peace and happiness that is our birthright can be experienced.
Aimee Warren
I first met Aimee in March 2025 at the Nikki Slade Kirtan Facilitation Training in London, where she became my Kirtan partner and steady companion throughout the journey. From the very beginning, I felt incredibly fortunate to be paired with her — especially given her background in music and singing.
I instantly fell in love with Aimee’s voice.
I feel so grateful that Aimee will be joining me, not only to assist during the in-person intensives, but also to share the medicine of her voice through our evening bhakti yoga sessions. Aimee embodies a beautiful shakti energy — a grounding, heart-opening presence that brings a sense of balance and harmony alongside the more masculine pillars held by Guy and David.
Aimee is a heart-led yoga teacher, soundscape maker, and devotional singer with 15 years of dedicated practice, 450 hours of training across yoga, sound, and breathwork, and over 5,000 hours of holding space for others.
Rooted in the wisdom of the Yamas and Niyamas, she weaves together movement, sound, and breath to guide people back to themselves, to their bodies, to their safety, and to their innate capacity for love. Her journey began at home, passed down through the women in her family, and has grown into a lifelong devotion to the practice and to those she serves.
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Aimee is a heart-led yoga teacher, soundscape maker and mantra chanter with fifteen years of dedicated practice and over 450 hours of training across yoga, sound and breathwork. Rooted in the wisdom of the Yamas and Niyamas, she weaves together movement, sound and breath to guide others back to themselves - to their bodies, their safety and their innate capacity for love.
Her journey began at home, passed down through the women in her family, her grandmother to her mother, her mother to her. That lineage of embodied wisdom planted a seed that has grown into a lifelong devotion to the practice and to those she serves. To date, she has held over 5,000 hours of space across these modalities, a depth of presence that can only be earned, never rushed.
Aimee holds a deep belief that practice is a personal inquiry, a living journey that becomes richer and more whole in the company of others. She approaches every class, every session and every breath as a student first, curious, open and endlessly grateful for work that never fully ends.
There is nothing she loves more than holding space - guiding a room into collective calm, supporting nervous system regulation and helping people remember that they already hold everything they need within them. It is her joy, her calling and her daily privilege.
Kirtan Piece: (detailed)
Kirtan and mantra chanting hold a particularly tender place in Aimee's heart — and her journey to them is one of loss, return and quiet destiny.
As a professional singer and songwriter for over fifteen years, Aimee had always lived inside her voice. Then, at thirty, a stroke took it from her. What had once felt effortless and defining suddenly felt out of reach — and with it, a part of herself she didn't know how to grieve.
The seed, though, had already been planted. Years earlier, during her 200-hour yoga teacher training, she had encountered kirtan for the first time. Something stirred — a recognition she couldn't quite name. She filed it away, knowing only that one day she would return.
That day came through necessity as much as longing. As her recovery unfolded, the inner voice grew louder than the silence. Kirtan offered what nothing else could — a way back to her voice that asked nothing of her except presence. No performance. No perfection. Just devotion. And in that space, something extraordinary happened: her voice, her creativity and her sense of self began to find their way home.
She now believes her path to devotional singing was always hers — just beautifully, mysteriously skewed. The stroke was not a detour. It was the road.
Aimee has loved chanting since long before her stroke, precisely because it offered her somewhere to sing that existed entirely outside the pressures of being good or being heard. A sanctuary. Since her recovery, it has become something even more — a living practice of return, resilience and deep musical joy.
She is honoured to be contributing kirtan to this training, and quietly, wholeheartedly, hopes it plants a seed in you too.
David Keil
I first learned about David Keil in 2019. I later completed an advanced online Yoga Anatomy Teacher Training with him, which was incredibly well-informed and thoughtfully put together. David’s depth of knowledge, the richness of his resources, and his ability to teach such a technical and advanced subject with clarity and accessibility, even in an online format, utterly blew me away.
David is truly one of the best teachers I’ve ever had the good fortune to study with. His library of resources is a genuine treasure chest, and I feel so grateful that he has created these modules to support teachers like myself with their 200-hour TTC. It’s such a blessing to have his self-paced anatomy tutorials to guide and accompany us on this journey.
I genuinely can’t wait to explore the content with you that David has so thoughtfully and generously crafted to support us along the way.
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David Keil was introduced to yoga in 1989 by his Tai Chi Chuan teacher. Both the Tai Chi and Yoga practice at the ripe age of 17 began his research into his own mind-body connections. His search continued through massage therapy where he discovered many insights and affirmations of what he had been exploring and finding on his own through his practices. One of the most important elements was the specific understanding of the musculoskeletal system and how fascinating, beautiful, and amazing the body is on the scientific level and how that directly played into and off of his own understanding of the human body. He was given names and explanations for some of the things he had been experiencing and feeling.
As an instructor of Kinesiology (the study of movement and musculoskeletal anatomy) at Miami's Educating Hands School of Massage from 1999-2003, David developed a fun, informal and informative style of teaching. By repeatedly teaching incoming students who had no prior understanding of anatomy, David was confronted with the problem of making such a complex and beautiful system accessible and understandable to the average person.
David brings his unique style and ability to make things simple to the yoga world. Because of his passion and desire to share the human body with everyone, he delivers this complex and sometimes frustrating topic in a way that is very accessible and understandable to yoga practitioners.
Over the years David has used his skills as a Neuromuscular Therapist to help people reduce their chronic pain patterns. He often brings this information into his workshops where students are regularly uncovering painful patterns or injuries in their bodies.
David was introduced to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in 1999. But it was in 2001 that he met John Scott in Penzance, UK, presenting his anatomy workshops for the first time overseas. Two weeks practicing with John was transformational and he realized that he had found his teacher. This began a relationship of both teacher/student as well as a collaborative colleague relationship that continues today.
It was also John who told David to go to Mysore, India the following year, which he did. David arrived in Mysore in 2002 where he studied with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in the “old” shala. In fact, it was the last year that the old shala was used for practice. David was authorized in 2004 and returned yearly for extended visits to Mysore with his wife Gretchen Suarez. They are both Authorized Level 2 and grateful for their time in Mysore, meeting Patabhi Jois and studying with R. Sharath, his grandson, over the years.
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