SARAHJOY MARSH, MA, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT certified yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and author, is a vibrant, compassionate catalyst for transformation.
While fundamentally informed by the teachings of yoga, Sarahjoy also masterfully integrates her training in Western therapy and mental health, interpersonal counseling, neurobiology, reciprocal muscle inhibition, and kinesiology. She has an unwavering belief in people’s innate goodness and their capacity to re-awaken to their potential.
The combination of her ability to identify when a conditioned mind pattern crowds out clear thinking and to inspire the courage to bring insight into action, her knowledge of powerful yoga and mindfulness tools, her perspective on the terrain of the stages of recovery and the tools to use along the way make herYoga for Recovery methodology (outlined in her book Hunger, Hope & Healing: A Yoga Approach to Reclaiming Your Relationship with Your Body and Food) a comprehensive and effective healing modality. Sarahjoy enthusiastically embraces her students’ well-being in a pragmatic yet passionate way, seeing them as their true self, filled with innate potential and a vital, necessary gift to bring to others – that is, their genuine, vulnerable, and radiant self. She masterfully creates authentic community on a deep level.
Clear-hearted and sensitive toward those that suffer from addictions – in particular disordered eating patterns and body image issues, and for those living with anxiety, depression, and trauma, Sarahjoy ignites a person’s confidence in themselves as capable of traversing the challenges and joys of awakening from suffering. Through her work with addiction and recovery, as well as her decades of commitment to working with those whose lives have been impacted by marginalization (poverty, prejudice, lack of access to resources such as education, health care, or mental health support), she has created an accessible library of tools that develop the life skills people need to re-create health (both physical and mental); to internalize their sense of worth, belonging, and capacity; and to thrive emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
Sarahjoy has a Masters in Counseling and certification in Interpersonal Neurobiology. She has been training yoga teachers, yoga outreach volunteers, and mental health providers, including clinical psychologists and socials workers, in the tools of yoga for 24 years. She is a student and scholar of yoga with 26 years of professional teaching experience and 30 years of yogic study. From her extensive background, Sarahjoy created “amrita yoga”, a form of vinyasa yoga that integrates Ayurveda, physical therapy, neuroscience, yoga philosophy and psychology, pranayama, and mindfulness.
She also designed 200-hr Teacher Training Programs, a 300-hr Professional YogaTraining, and an 800-hr Yoga Therapy Training. Sarahjoy is the creator and facilitator of the first 200-hour Yoga Alliance Yoga Teacher Training to be taught in prison in the US. She continues this work in Oregon with the DAYA Foundation.
Committed to supporting marginalized populations and using yoga for social justice she founded two non-profits. Living Yoga brings yoga to prisons, alcohol and drub rehab centers and transitional facilities. DAYA Foundation teaches yoga and mindfulness tools to those with addiction, anxiety or depression; to those with medical issues such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease; and to others who would not be able to attend yoga classes because of social, financial or physical constraints.