A flow and functional movement expert for over a decade, Raquel Marra is powerful, humble, smart and grounded. She's a teachers' teacher - the kind you know you have something to learn from no matter how long you have taught.

The kind of teacher that both new and seasoned students feel instantly at ease with no matter what place they are starting from. Her raison d'etre for teaching has always been community. "My joy is finding like-minded folks practicing and learning together. You know intuitively that we are each other's people. My personal practice is a constant search for balance between movement and stillness, strength and flexibility, loudness and silence, extroversion and introversion. These juxtapositions fuel my passion for practice and I teach what I discover. So in many ways my classes are an endeavor to yoke the quiet beauty of personal practice with the excitement of sharing the experience with a like-minded kula. My aim is to move through this life as I try to on my mat: with grace, fluidity, vulnerability and a strong sense of agency." Her story informs so much of her rich teaching. Born and raised by a single mom in New York City, she majored in English Literature and Creative Writing at Queens College before working a corporate job in Manhattan. While working in the financial arena, her daily respite was the gym across the street. One day she walked into a kickboxing class to discover the schedule was now yoga. Too embarrassed to walk out, she put down a mat and the "slow burn" love story between yoga and Raquel began. Through the journey of the ups and downs of her life, yoga has been her muse and touchstone. After 200 and 300-hour trainings, one of her mentors, Jason Crandell, suggested mobility principles to grapple with a shoulder injury born of repetitive movement. Raquel became fascinated with functional mobility and joint strengthening work and went on to specialize in Functional Range Conditioning created by musculoskeletal expert Dr. Andreo Spina. Her shoulder healed, she began introducing the principles in her yoga teaching with stunning results for students. Her advanced training in kinstretch and further study of functional movement practices make Raquel our resident expert in joint strengthening , injury mitigation and mobility work. Raquel shared "Doing Vinyasa for 20 years, my focus was the mental calm derived from repetition and deep stretching which made my body more pliant. The functional movement piece builds strength and stability, not just in practice but as a part of regular life. The more mobile a person is, the more they are able to maximize their movement potential safely, efficiently, and effectively." Outside yoga, Raquel is an avid skier, golfer and beginner fly-fisher and is working her way through hiking the 4000-footers in New England.