Meet our team
Our Founders
We’re Jen and Michelle, two yogis who came together through our love of the practice and found synergy through our shared experiences and complementary strengths and styles. Not to mention our love for tattoos, dope beats, and four letter expletives. We forged a partnership to share our dedication to the practice that began with co-hosting retreats and grew into the vision that became Yoga Commons: a safe and supportive community to foster self-discovery and growth through yoga that honors the lineages of the practices that transformed our lives.
A space for less drama, more dharma. All are welcome here.
Jen Armistead
Jen is a scientist, humanitarian, yoga practitioner and teacher. Initially drawn to yoga as part of her own healing journey, she eventually discovered Rocket Yoga, which offered the perfect balance she needed to develop a disciplined practice with space to explore. Later, she turned to Dharma Yoga to grow her spiritual practice, and more fully integrate yoga into all aspects of her life.
Jen approaches yoga much like an experiment, and encourages everyone to investigate the potential of their mind-body-spirit connection. She values autonomy over authority and strives to empower individuals to develop a compassionate, intuitive and exploratory yoga practice.
Jen is a student above all else and is grateful for her teachers and mentors, namely Sri Dharma Mittra, David Kyle, and Nathania Stambouli, as well as all those of the Ashtanga and Dharma Yoga lineages, past and present. She has completed over 1200 hours of training and is a certified Dharma Yoga and Rocket Yoga Teacher.
Michelle Nguyen
Michelle (also known as Big Meesh) is a residential architect, an ashtangi & rocket student, and a yoga teacher. Michelle came to yoga as a way to reintroduce exercise back into her life after suffering a concussion in 2013. Along with regaining strength and balance, what Michelle didn’t expect to find was the connection between the mind, body, and breath and how the practice permeates into all facets of her life even off the yoga mat.
Michelle is a RYT-500 through Yoga Alliance and is certified to teach the Rocket through David Kyle, as well as Yin Yoga through Yael Flusberg. She received her RYT-300 at Miami Life Center, which focused on the Ashtanga Yoga system. Michelle is a regular, Ashtanga Mysore practitioner and is grateful for her teachers; Maggie Lively, Jarrick Browner, and Tim Feldmann. In the yoga room, she’s all about creating a safe space, building a supportive community, including all types of bodies, while honoring individuality.
Off mat, Michelle enjoys traveling around the world with her husband of many lifetimes, hanging around with their adorable pups, and designing the house of your dreams.
Meet the Team
Our teachers are students of yoga, first and foremost. They each have years of personal practice and specialized training in Ashtanga, Rocket, and/or Dharma Yoga. They are committed to sharing their experience and expertise with our community so we can all grow together. We are honored to have these committed and dedicated yogis on our team.
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Classes: Rocket Yoga, Forearm Stands, Handstands, & Flexibility
Heather’s yoga journey began 20 years ago in India. While studying Buddhism there a fellow student introduced her to Ashtanga. As a pre-professional ballet dancer and longtime spiritual seeker, yoga combined her two great loves, movement and spirituality. Heather’s goal is to cultivate a spirit of fun and light heartedness in her Rocket classes, encouraging play, risk taking and cheering each other on as we step outside our comfort zones. Expect lots of laughter, interaction and workshopping inversions and arm balances in this class. Heather has over 200 hours of Rocket training with the Progressive Ashtanga Vinyasa School under David Kyle and Kevin Castillo and has completed the Ashtanga Intermediate Series with Jonathan Cronin and Jayme Sekel (Mysore) at Inner Power Yoga in Sterling, VA. She practices handstands with ShellyFLEX.
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Classes: Rocket Yoga
Sara is a creative leader, an animal lover, and a practitioner of various styles of yoga, though Rocket holds a special place in her heart. She’s been on the mat regularly since 2015, and strives to help students build personal awareness and meet themselves where they currently are, while having fun.
Through instruction, Sara hopes to give back to her community all the wisdom and love it has shown her. Sara is a registered yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance and holds an additional 100-hour certification in Rocket Yoga through the Progressive Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga School under Kevin Castillo. Sara is forever a student. She loves to travel and always has a yoga mat in her suitcase.
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Classes: Half Primary & Full Primary
John has been practicing yoga since 2005, following a diverse array of mind-body practices that have included Tai Chi Chuan, Zen meditation, and Japanese tea ceremony. An IT professional by day, he appreciates yoga for the grounding quality it provides in everyday life. He was first introduced to Ashtanga yoga in 2010 and attended his first Mysore practice in 2013, maintaining a daily ashtanga practice since that time. He is grateful to his Mysore teachers who he has studied with over the years, including Tova Steiner, Keith Moore, Wendy McGrath, and Faith Scimecca. He has also maintained a parallel practice of Iyengar yoga over the years and sees it as a compliment to Ashtanga, each informing and deepening the study of the other. He is a registered yoga teacher through Yoga Alliance, completing 500 hours of training as well as hundreds of hours of additional study. John is also a devoted student and teacher of Sanskrit, believing the knowledge of the language allows for a deeper connection to the yoga tradition.
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Classes: Half Primary & Full Primary
Julia is an E-RYT 200 and has been teaching since 2011. She practiced Baptiste Power Yoga for several years before working towards her certification. Since then, she has come to embrace all different styles and traditions and is continuously enchanted by the vastness of yoga's offerings. Her main practice nowadays is Ashtanga and Rocket yoga. She has completed 100 hrs of teacher training with David C. Kyle of Ashtanga Yoga Puerto Rico and is certified to teach The Rocket Yoga. She has also apprenticed under David Ingalls in the Ashtanga Mysore tradition. Julia considers herself to be a lifelong student of yoga first and foremost before she is a teacher but is always excited to share all that she knows in the present with the world.
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Classes: Yin
Julz has been a student of yoga since she was 16 years old, finding that Yoga has helped her manage chronic pain and anxiety in miraculous ways. After years of learning and practicing, teaching yoga became an organic progression in deepening her understanding of yoga while sharing the practice she loves with her community. Having trained almost exclusively in Vinyasa and Ashtanga for many years, she took a yin training on a whim and felt incredibly compelled by the tradition. She finds that yin is an allowing, yielding and nourishing yoga practice, and that its slow paced and grounding qualities are incredibly complementary to other more yang-like practices such as Rocket, Vinyasa and Ashtanga. She loves that the yin tradition’s stillness feels challenging and healing at the same time and hopes to hold space for students to balance and rest in a sometimes hectic world.
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Classes: Dharma, & Pranayama + Yoga Nidra
Holly Halvorson has a lifetime of training, teaching and performing as a dancer, choreographer, and movement artist. She has studied and practiced Bikram, Ashtanga, Jivamukti, Anusara, Rocket, Budokon, Iyengar, and Power Yoga. After developing an appreciation for the grace and depth of the classical practice of yoga and teaching techniques as taught by Sri Dharma Mittra, she completed her 200-hour teacher training under his guidance at the Dharma Yoga Center in NYC in 2013. She is working toward completing the 500 hour Dharma Yoga Teacher Training in September 2024 and in the Bishnu Ghosh Method in 2025. She does her best to live in alignment with the classical teachings and ethical and spiritual practices of yoga. She is a graphic designer, web developer, choreographer, and teaches barre and hip hop dance/boxing classes in addition to yoga.
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Classes: Full Primary & Mysore
After some years of exploring other styles of yoga, AJ began his Ashtanga journey in Olympia, WA in 2013. The hook for him was how empowering the “Mysore" method is for each practitioner, allowing them to grow into their practice at their own pace. He made his first trip to Mysore, India to study with Sharath Jois in 2018. After fulfilling all requirements for level 2 authorization, he received Sharathji's blessing to teach in 2022. AJ believes that yoga is for everyone and strives to teach with this in mind. Instead of fitting students into an asana-specific box, his focus is on working together with each student to find the best path to integrate the practice into their body. Through his yoga teaching and career as a massage therapist and personal trainer, AJ has worked extensively with a variety of students, from elderly populations in senior living communities to athletes and everyone in between.
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Classes: Dharma, Rocket, & Sound Bath & Meditation
Sydney's journey into yoga began in 2014, embarking on a transformative path through self-practice in Kundalini Yoga. This initial foray was driven by a desire for conscious expansion, where pranayama, intention, mudras, and asanas became tools for deepening self-awareness. This profound personal evolution catalyzed a shift away from old modes of being, embracing the dynamic flow of life with newfound clarity and purpose.
Her practice evolved, finding joy and vigor in Rocket Yoga, a discipline she joyfully shared with the Elkridge, Maryland community starting in 2021. Sydney's quest for deeper understanding led her to Dharma Yoga in 2023, a practice that fostered a connection to her innermost truths. Immersed in communities rooted in rich yoga lineages, surrounded by compassionate, high-caliber individuals, Sydney experienced a profound realization: the essence of self is boundless, a reflection of the interconnectedness of all beings. "I am you, you are me" encapsulates this journey of discovery and unity.
With over 950 hours of Yoga Alliance-approved RYS teacher training, Sydney's credentials are impressive. She has completed both 200 and 500-hour programs at the Dharma Yoga Center, and has studied Progressive Ashtanga Yoga (Rocket) under Patrick McCleaf. Yet, her learning continues, fueled by the wisdom and guidance of mentors like Jen Armistead, Michelle Nguyen, and Heather Hax. Sydney stands as a beacon in the yoga community, her life a testament to the transformative power of dedicated practice and the pursuit of self-knowledge.
