meet the team

Cooper has studied with great teachers such as Darren Rhodes, Donna Farhi, Ana Forrest, Amy Ippolitti, Christina Sell, Doug Swenson, Ed Marks, Mary Obendorfer, George Purvis, Bikram Chodury, Kofi Busia, Amy DeFilippi, and Mukunda Stiles.

Cooper began practicing yoga in 1997, blessed by two Integral yoga teachers who were both doctors of chiropractic; her first instruction was both spiritual and profoundly informed by the instructors’ knowledge of the body. A lifelong athlete, Cooper became diverted by more physically challenging forms of hatha, going on to become a Bikram instructor. Following a desire for more arcane and spiritual integration, she traveled to Kerala, India to obtain her Sivananda teaching certificate. It was in the Sivananda ashram that she was able to connect her earlier career as a musician with her yoga through Vedic chant.

After completing a teacher training in Bhava yoga with Peter Rizzo, Cooper began teaching vinyasa in the lineage of Krishnamacharya. Captivated by Mukunda Styles at a workshop in 2010, she cleared her schedule to take Mukunda’s Structural Yoga therapy course. Her most recent path of study was the Ayurvedic Yoga Teacher course with Mukunda and Chinnamasta Styles.

Cooper currently owns and operates the Antahsara Yoga Shala located in Clarkesville GA. Antahsara Yoga Shala is a part of A Garden For Wellness, a wellness center offering clinical hypnosis, massage, yoga, and chiropractic care.

Cooper’s personal sadhana is defined by use of Patanjali Yoga Sutra Darshan as a reference text and her devotion to the eight limbed path.

Cooper practices vippasana meditation as taught by SN Goenka. As a teacher, Cooper strives to integrate the tapas of a strong practice with the santosha of a quiet mind. She is sensitive to the perils of strong physical work in a culture that is body obsessed, and believes that only through the eight-limbed path can we become free from internal friction and external attachments.

Cooper knows that you can use the power of the mind to change your life for the better from personal experience. She is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist American Council of Hypnotist Examiners #308-286 through the Hypnotherapy Academy of America. Cooper attended the Hypnotherapy Academy of America in Santa Fe, NM, where she also coached, and she has had the honor of studying with one of the fathers of modern hypnotherapy, Gil Boyne.

Cooper approaches hypnosis holistically; she works with the person and not the “problem.”

“The yoga shala is a laboratory, it is where we begin to observe our patterning. It is an amazing journey to become aware enough to observe, and in control enough to create more options for our behavior.”