About Daysha
Photo Larkin Goff, 2011
Daysha, an Idaho native, is the founder/owner of the Idaho Yoga Co-op Non-Profit Inc., including the Idaho Yoga Co-op Wellness Center, in Idaho Falls, ID, and the Idaho Teton Yoga Co-op in Idaho’s Teton Valley. Daysha has taught yoga all around the United States in Idaho, Boston, Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, Denver and Boulder, Colorado, Southern California (San Diego to La Jolla), and has also led International Yoga and Service Retreats to Nicaragua and India, with more upcoming trips to India and Morocco/Jordan, and other international destinations, along with women’s creativity, healing and empowerment retreats in Moab, via workshops in SLC and other parts of Utah, and artists retreats in the surroundings of the Tetons. Daysha has worked with 7 of the USSA Ski and Snowboard teams and several athletes that are 1x to 2x Olympians. She also taught yoga at the White House Athletic Center, along with 20 other government sites, at at large festivals in Washington, D.C., Daysha has taught at large yoga events, fundraisers, festivals, along with other events for over 13 years. She has been practicing for over 20 years.
Daysha’s style of teaching is varied with joy, creativity, uniqueness, charisma, motivation, focus, attentiveness, spontaneity, incorporation of various elements, eccentric movement, and truth. Her joy ranges in teaching large YoKid events on the east coast, to working with inner-city DC teens in public school programs, to senior centers, retirement homes, and developmental disability centers, to beginners, to prenatal clients, to autistic children, to more advanced physical yoga movement, to balancing the physical and mental game for local athletes to Olympians. And from demos on stage at DC Yoga Week, teaching at the DC Global Yoga Mala, from the White House, IMF, Pentagon and World Bank to Idaho’s homegrown Namaste Yoga studio’s first classes, to school children in India’s slums and families converted from landfill subsistence to farming, for classes and photo shoots for sponsors, to DJ yoga events, to the more personal and transformational yoga, meditation, and spiritual growth of individual clients from CEOs to long-standing students and clients, to family friends and housewives.
After graduating with an International Business degree in 2007, she set off on a year-long trip through India, staying in a wide array of ashrams, and studying under many teachers and a variety of traditions. She studied at Yoga Vidya Gurukul under the Bihar School of Yoga and completed her US Yoga Alliance 200hr R.Y.T certification, and then returned to Thailand to further her meditation, yoga, and philosophy studies. She also completed a course in Ayurveda at Yoga Vidya Gurukul along with additional certifications in Yoga for Therapy, Kid's Yoga, Yoga Nidra, and more, while assisting with numerous Teacher Training programs for 200 hour, 300 hour, 500 hour, and kid's yoga instructor teacher training programs. She has been the lead organizer of the 300hr (200+100hr) Yogic Lifestyle & Teacher Training Course via the Idaho Yoga Co-op for over 5 years, incorporating visiting instructors from an array of styles, backgrounds, and passions.
She began her Theravada Buddhist study in Thailand during 2005 with the venerable Thai Buddhist monk, Dr. Chatree, who runs meditation centers around the world. Daysha returned to Thailand, after studying throughout India in 2007, to complete a two week silent meditation study with her teacher's Abbot. She stayed and studied in monasteries and ashrams in Southeast Asia and India, including but not limited to the OSHO ashram, Amma's ashram, Shivananda Ashram, BKS Iyengar's ashram along with other ashrams in Rishikesh, India while taking time to explore Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram. She attended His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's Annual Spring Teachings in Dharamsala, India, at the base of the Himalayas where the Dalai Lama resides in exile, and took her Bodhisattva vows. In her years since returning from her first year in India, Daysha helped open Namaste Yoga in Idaho, taught around the county, led trips to India and other locations, and has continued to learn and grow through the practice and study of many traditions. In addition to her meditation study in India, Daysha has hence studied Sufi Meditation, Transcendental Meditation, Blessing Meditation with Michael de Francisco, Yogic Meditation, Tantric Meditation, and more. In addition to her Theravada Buddhism study, Daysha has also studied Tibetan Buddhism, Hindu, Zen and Yogic traditions. Recently, she has participated in additional teachings with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, taught at the International Festival of Traditional Yoga three times and attended the International Festival of Yoga in Rishikesh, while also teaching at the FIS World Championships in 2019 for Ski & Snowboard in Park City in 2019.
Daysha has lived in New Zealand, Spain, Thailand, Ghana, and India, and she has traveled to nearly 50 countries around the world. She organized the Teton Wellness Fest at Snow King in Jackson, WY in 2014, and has since been a sponsor for the YogaFort Yoga Festival as a part of TreeFort in Boise, ID, and the Downtown Yoga Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah, while teaching at other local yoga festivals in Logan, UT, and Idaho Falls, ID. For nearly seven years, Daysha has worked with Women's India Trust, and has taught a week-long women's entrepreneurship course for over 20 aspiring women via WIT, the first non-profit for women established in India. For several years, she has worked with Apne Aap, visiting women groups in the sex trade, assisting refugees seeking safety, speaking on local/collective entrepreneurship, offering yoga and safety talks in schools for girls at high risk of trafficking.
Daysha earned a master’s degree in International Development from American University in Washington, DC in 2010, studying for her first graduate semester through a consortium at Harvard University and working as a research assistant and as a part of a Harvard/MIT research group on Darfur, whilst teaching yoga and meditation throughout the area. She has taught as an adjunct professor at EITC, Idaho State University, Cal State Monterey Bay, and worked with the University of Idaho for many years as a VIEW university speaker on entrepreneurship, and working with the College of Business and Economics and the International Programs Office in assisting teaching the CAYA (Central American Youth Ambassador) program for four years. In the last few years, she has been teaching International NGO courses at the university, and leading yoga events with Olympians at the Monterey Sports Clubs, working with local human trafficking organizations and women's non-profits, and teaching at local studios in offering workshops and weekly classes. Recently, in Fall of 2019, she returned to assist a professor with two classes at Harvard Law. She is happy and excited to convey what she has learned around the world in her classes, workshops, yoga trips to the Tetons, and international retreats, and most importantly, to seek always to convey the true essence of yoga in all of her teaching and work around the world.
Please see her resume for more information.
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