Ashley Ihinfeldt

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With a DVD as her instructor, Ashley Started yoga in 2002 in her living room to help manage the
stress of nursing school.  She is from Oswego, NY located on Lake Ontario in Upstate NY.  After
moving to Charlotte in 2008, she started a more regular practice after meeting a wonderful
yoga teacher named Avi.  It started with some one on one sessions, but then Avi invited her to
come to Community Yoga. Since her first class it has felt like home!
Ashley loves how at the end of a yoga class you feel invigorated and renewed.  Your practice is
a great way to come to know yourself.  She has always struggled with anxiety, and yoga has
been one of the major pillars in the restoration of her whole-self.  Yoga has given her confidence
and has helped teach her how to care for and love herself.
In February 2017 she had the opportunity to take a vinyasa teacher training through Urban
Bliss in Charlotte, where she completed her 200 RYT under the instruction of Lizzy Hoffmann.
Ashley loves that as an instructor, she can share yoga with others and guide them to love and
explore themselves.  She especially loves sharing yoga with new students, seniors, or anyone
who thinks they are not able to do yoga.  She loves that Yoga is for everyone.
Ashley lives in Huntersville with her husband, Collin and her two dogs, Stig and Hank. She
loves anything you can do outside, camping and hiking are her favorites. She likes to read and
thrives on learning new things. She has been a nurse for 16 years. She feels that being both a
nurse and a yoga instructor increases her ability to help others heal.

Cindi Ferguson

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Cindi Ferguson is a Certified MMI Meditation and Mindfulness Instructor.

She holds an M.A. in Counseling and offers instruction in SEED™Meditation  – Simple, Easy, Every Day Meditation – as well as several mindfulness meditation methods. She has recently studied with Jack Kornfield, the famous Buddhist Teacher and founder of Insight Meditation.  She incorporates the following types of meditations in her classes:

SEED™

Mantra

Breath Awareness

Body Awareness

Loving Kindness

Yoga Nidra

McLean Meditation Institute

SEED™  Simple Easy Every Day Meditation

Shannon Gray

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Shannon Gray began practicing yoga in 2000. As an avid long distance runner, she welcomed the relief of joint pain after turning to a more consistent yoga practice, but was also thankful for the lessons of mindfulness yoga introduced.  She completed her 200 RYT in 2005 through Integral Yoga, Richmond, Virginia and continued training in Prenatal Yoga in 2006 through Yoga Source. It wasn’t until experiencing significant health issues and the death of her mother that she learned the tremendous gift yoga offers in accepting a changing body’s abilities and finding joy and light in life’s experiences.  Her goal is to allow a space to practice yoga for everyone. Along with returning to teaching yoga, she am also a consultant and advocate for safer personal care products with Beautycounter.  The other joys in my life are spending time with her two daughters and husband, curling up with a book and reading, and supporting the performing arts.

Jessica Strickland

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Yoga has been part of Jessica’s live life since 2009, after the birth of her second child. It has brought, flexibility, lightness on and off her mat in everyday life; teaching her to live life with love and in the moment. Her desire to delve deeper into her practice and share with others led her to complete her 220 hour training  in Hatha Yoga at Evolution Yoga with Stacy Berry and Jonthan Miles in 2014. Her natural compassion and understanding for children prompted her to complete children’s yoga certification: Twist Kids Yoga with Mary Beth Bender and Shona Baldoni in 2019. Jessica would like to express her profound gratitude to her teachers for the opportunity  and wisdom they have given and shared with her.

In class Jessica brings a creative flow, nurturing,and playfulness to deepen the practice of yogis from the  young to the wise. Outside the studio she enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters. She can often be found enjoying nature through gardening and photography, or restoring her 1978 bug and 1965 Karmann Ghia.

Mikki Ayers

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Mikki is a mother and full-time science teacher who first acknowledged the benefits of yoga over a decade ago. She began a consistent practice while living in Washington state, connecting with an instructor who had roots in Asheville. Being a native North Carolinian, this inspired Mikki to keep returning to classes week after week, not only for the benefits of Hatha yoga, but also for a sense of home. Through the years, consistency has varied through life changes, but she has always found solitude when practicing yoga. It brings a sense of calm in the midst of everydayness, hurried lifestyles, and varied life experiences. Her goal in teaching is to share the benefits to everyone, regardless of their journey. Yoga requires us to put our intention forward through the use of postures, breathwork, and meditation that help to strengthen and nurture the body, mind, and spirit. Yoga grounds Mikki in her daily intentions each time she shows up to create space on the mat. Whether it is Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Hatha, Yin, or Restorative, yoga is a gift to each and everyone one of us: our minds, our bodies, and our spirits.

Amy Schneider

Amy Schneider

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Owner/Instructor
LMT#1182

Welcome to Community Yoga!

Yoga found me in the mountains of upstate New York when I took yoga for the first time with Rob Greenberg. As I walked away from that first class, my cells were floating. I had found home and have never left. Yoga started a conversation between my heart and soul, and it’s a conversation I have continued throughout my life and which has inspired and sustained me as I built and nurtured Community Yoga.I honor my other teachers who have inspired me on the path — Brian Kest, Alan Finger, and I love sharing what it is like to be in your body, to experience each unique sensation, from the placement of your fingerpads on the mat for Down Dog to the extension of your arms in Virabradrasana. Yoga for me is much more than achieving the perfect Triangle. As we move past the physicality of yoga practice and unearth the sacred, emotional, personal and spiritual practice, we find the real beauty of yoga.As a teacher and studio owner, I strive for inclusivity. All ages, body types, yoga levels are invited and welcomed to the studio. I am a believer in celebrating our many similarities rather than counting our differences. *Amy has completed 2, 200 HR Teacher Training Programs. Sivananda was by far the highlight for her, where she gained the greatest understanding and depth of the science. Still she is a firm believer that a piece of paper doesn’t make a “Great Yoga Teacher”. A sincere humility and love of the practice as well as a love for humanity/life.

Uni Smith

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Uni Smith (meditation instructor)

Uni Smith is an Insurance Sales Professional and has worked in a Sales Organization for over 20 years.  Her occupation was draining her physically, emotionally and mentally.  She was seeking something to help ease the stress from my daily life. She was introduced to the Twin Hearts Meditation in March 2013. The difference it made in her life was immediate and simply incredible. She has been practicing Twin Hearts Meditation almost daily ever since.

Since practicing the Twin Hearts Meditation, Uni has cultivated love, peace, joy, patience, balance, and good health and is still in Insurance Sales. The Twin Hearts Meditation has truly blessed Uni’s life. In return, she decided she would like to be in and of service to others by teaching others how this simple guided meditation can bless them too.

Meditation on twin hearts – is an advanced, guided meditation technique for individuals 16 years of age and older, with the focus on an act of service and loving-kindness to promote peace in the world.

Amy Parrott

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Amy Parrott (instructor)

Although she didn’t know at the time, Amy’s life was forever changed in 1998. That was when she first started practicing yoga and meditation on a regular basis. That led to her insatiable desire for knowledge about health and wellness.  Since then she spent years avidly studying and practicing a variety of healing arts – tai chi, qi gong, Reiki, Touch for Health, and nutrition to name a few. She consistently continued her yoga practice through two pregnancies and a debilitating back injury. These experiences are how she arrived at her revelation of most recent mission. She feels her purpose now is to share the message that anybody can use gentle movements to create physical and emotional well-being, no matter what their current physical condition. She believes that the mindfulness and self-awareness that gentle movement creates is as important as it’s physical health benefits. She promotes a practice that: reminds us to honor and respect the present needs of our bodies, discourages judgment, promotes mental clarity or spiritual connection, and teaches us how to lovingly accept our limitations.

Meredith Luber

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Meredith Luber (instructor)

Yoga guided Meredith back to laughter and joy through learning to nurture her true self after her mother passed. Wanting to share the light and healing she learned through yoga, Meredith completed her 220 hour teacher training through The Bodhi Tree with Lesa Crocker in 2007. Wanting to share the light and healing she learned through yoga, Meredith completed her 220 hour teacher training through The Bodhi Tree with Lesa Crocker in 2007. The other joys in her life besides yoga are her husband and two small children. She enjoys taking family walks, dancing in the living room with her children, jewelry making, reading and watching college sports with her husband.

Lisa Konstandt

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Lisa Konstandt (instructor)

10 years ago when Lisa discovered the joy of yoga and its many benefits she fell in love with the sense of calm, peace, and inner awareness she acquired from her practice. Since then, she has dedicated her time to practicing, studying, and sharing yoga with others. In 2016, she was compelled to complete her 200-hour teacher training with Awakenings Yoga Studio. The training deepened her understanding of the history, foundations, movements, body mechanics, breath work, and spiritual nature of this centuries old practice.  She sees yoga as a way of life, threading the knowledge of its teachings throughout her connections, relationships, and the daily grind. Lisa strives to bring a sense of lightheartedness, spirituality, and compassion to her classes where ALL are welcome. Her intention is to cultivate happiness and balance through increased awareness and mindful living, and hopes to inspire students to do the same. 

She has a master’s degree in Occupational Therapy and is a certified holistic health coach as well.  When Lisa is not teaching or practicing yoga, you can find her in the kitchen cooking healthy, organic, whole food meals, running and exercising with friends, having fun adventures with her husband, or hanging out with her college-aged daughters.