Founder & Lead Teacher
Pronounced Kay-va-la
Certified Yoga Therapist · Spiritual Teacher · Founder of The Mind-Body Connection
About Kevala
Most yoga teachers spend years in the practices and then, if they're fortunate, have some kind of awakening. Kevala did it the other way around. She spent years navigating the effects of trauma and PTSD, and then in 2019, without any prior yoga practice or spiritual framework, a kundalini awakening moved through her that she had no language for and no map of.
Yoga came immediately after, not as a wellness practice, but as the first framework she found that could actually account for what had happened. The classical texts described her experience with a precision that nothing else she encountered did. She didn't study yoga to become a teacher. She studied it to understand what she had lived through.
That sequence changed everything about how she teaches. She came to the philosophy from the inside of the experience, not the outside. The result is a body of work she built by combining what the classical tradition mapped with what behavioral and influence science explains about how human beings actually change, filtered through what she had seen firsthand, first in herself and then in hundreds of students.
After the awakening, she took the name Kevala, a Sanskrit word meaning complete, whole, alone in itself. She became a Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT), trained privately in the Krishnamacharya lineage, and founded The Mind-Body Connection in Upland, California. She is currently pursuing a Master's degree and Ph.D. in Yoga Science at Vivekananda Yoga University.
"I don't practice yoga. Yoga practices me."
Areas of Specialization
Clinical application of yoga for physical conditions, mental health, and chronic illness. Each session is tailored to the individual, not the diagnosis.
Every class at MBC is built on the principle that the nervous system learns safety through experience. Choice, pacing, and consent are the foundation, not an add-on.
Teaching rooted in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali and various classical philosophical texts. Philosophy not as subject matter but as a living framework for understanding suffering and its end.
For students who have moved past stress management into the deeper questions. Working with identity, consciousness, and the direct removal of what obscures what is already here.
Breath as medicine. Precise, therapeutic breathwork drawn from the Viniyoga tradition to regulate the nervous system, shift guṇas, and access deeper states of clarity and stillness.
Forming practitioners who teach from understanding, not performance. The Practitioner's Training is a 200-hour program built around philosophy, therapeutic application, and personal practice deepening.
Lineage & Training
Kevala's formal training comes directly from the Krishnamacharya lineage, widely considered the source of most modern yoga as practiced in the West. She trained privately and was mentored in two branches of that lineage simultaneously.
In the Ashtānga tradition, she trained under David Miliotis, an authorized teacher of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. In Viniyoga, Yoga Philosophy, and Yoga Therapy, she trained under the personal mentorship of Chase Bossart of the Yoga Well Institute, student of TKV Deśikāchār.
This dual training gives her an unusual range: the discipline and structure of the Ashtānga method alongside the adaptive, individualized precision of Viniyoga. Both draw from the same source. Together they form the formal backbone of everything taught at The Mind-Body Connection.
Additional Certifications
Academic Pursuit
Kevala is currently pursuing a Master's degree and Ph.D. in Yoga Science at Vivekananda Yoga University, one of the few institutions in the world offering graduate-level academic study of yoga as a scientific and philosophical discipline.
Work with Kevala
A therapeutic membership program combining small-group sessions, yoga therapy, neuroscience, and direct inner work. For those ready to address what is beneath the symptoms.
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Part One of the 200-hour certification. An intentionally small cohort. Philosophy, prāṇa, āsana, and personal practice deepening taught from the Krishnamacharya lineage.
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Individual yoga therapy and spiritual direction. For those navigating specific health conditions, deepening an existing practice, or ready for direct personal work.
Book a sessionFrom the Studio
Kevala writes on yoga therapy, trauma, consciousness, and the inner life of practice. Her writing draws directly from clinical observation and the classical texts.
