Kate Heffernan takes charge.
A veteran of the Boston yoga scene for over a decade, Kate Heffernan has been with Down Under 9 years.
"I was searching for a yoga home that gave me professional stability and passionate, smart, well-respected colleagues. I found it.
Having created what I need in my career and settled into who I am as a teacher, helping newer teachers facilitate that and dream their biggest dream. is a joy. Down Under is a real school and the breadth of offerings is unmatched. So helping to create that programming and chatting to students about the transformative journey of teacher training is something I was born for.
"I'm honored to be a Co-Chair of our incredible new Teacher Leadership Council.
I love being a resource for fellow teachers and to get to be someone people can come to with ideas and issues.
I love helping to co-create a different model for our industry that is forward-facing for the students, teachers, and managers who hold up our school. I love witnessing Justine's delight at being surrounded by colleagues she's worked with for decades who can now help her make decisions. We as teachers are now involved in all manner of issues and questions that come up around running a studio… now I get a first-hand seat into how much work it takes to run a studio of this caliber & excellence.
I've previously taught in a lot of different studios where decisions are handed down and as a teacher, there isn’t much of anything you can do to guide management or ownership.
With the community at Down Under we teachers not only get individual meetings discussing our aspirations, we collectively have agency to speak for ourselves and others, advocating for what we'd like to see in our school.
The TLC allows ideas to be responded to thoughtfully and purposefully that no doubt will have ripple effects in our industry. Facilitating this groundbreaking model gives me hope that yoga teachers can have as much security as in other professions, which is so not the norm.
There is a stereotype that teaching yoga is a “boutique profession” where you need a partner sustaining you or alternative jobs to make ends meet. That isn’t the case in my household. I have been a full-time yoga teacher for a decade so this is my career.
Sustainability, security, benefits, professionalism, and agency matter a great deal to me. Being part of a school that insists our profession must be sustainable and begins from the premise of collaboration and appreciation of diverse voices feels like what I've worked to accomplish in my career.
The intelligence of Kate's alignment-based Flow and tenderness of her R&R classes endear her to students of all ages and abilities. "I use my love of anatomy and physiology to instill bodily trust in my students, reinforcing that they know their body better than anyone else.
