Stephanie Adams Ruff
SAYF, YACEP, OES, ACE PT, CES, ERYT 500, AYC Level 3
BodyMind Fitness & Nutrition Consultant Certification 1998
Limited Availability for Private Sessions: Tuesdays 10:30-2:30
Email for Appointments: [email protected]
Sliding Scale $100-150 per session (50 min)
For Group Sessions, Steph teaches:
$25 Drop-In, 6 Sessions for $99, or $99/Month Unlimited
Register for "Online" version of the class for live-stream or recording (link sent after class and is good for 5 days)
Educational Platform for Yoga Teacher Mentoring and Education: www.sayfyoga.com
Stephanie brings over three decades of experience in fitness, yoga, movement education, nutrition, and personal development to her work with individual clients. Her approach is integrative and highly personalized, drawing from yoga philosophy, strength and functional movement training, orthopedic exercise, myofascial education, nutrition, mindset, and the lived experience of navigating the physical and emotional changes that come with midlife.
Rather than focusing on a single piece of the wellness puzzle, Stephanie helps clients understand how movement, nourishment, mindset, habits, nervous system health, and the way we relate to ourselves all influence one another. Her goal is to help each person develop practical tools that support greater strength, resilience, confidence, and well-being—not only for the present moment, but for the decades ahead.
1:1 Coaching & Personalized Training
Sometimes you know exactly what you need: a stronger body, better movement, support through menopause, help changing your relationship with food, or guidance through a difficult season of life. Other times, the pieces are harder to separate. How you move, eat, sleep, recover, think, respond to stress, and relate to yourself are deeply interconnected. Personalized 1:1 work gives you the opportunity to look at the whole picture and create an approach that fits your body, your life, and what matters most to you.
Sessions may focus primarily on one area or integrate several, including life coaching through yoga philosophy, menopause and longevity coaching, nutrition and mindset, orthopedic exercise and functional movement, myofascial work, and personalized strength training.
The goal is not perfection. It is to help you develop greater strength, clarity, confidence, resilience, and the practical skills to care for yourself well over the long term. Here are the four main areas that Steph has expertise in:
Orthopedic Exercise, Posture & Functional Movement
If something hurts, feels restricted, repeatedly becomes irritated, or simply does not move the way you would like, 1:1 movement work allows us to slow things down and look more closely. Your session may include assessment of posture, movement patterns, mobility, stability, body mechanics, muscular balance, compensation patterns, and functional strength.
Stephanie loves to play in the Gorge. Some of her favorite outdoor sports are skiing, mountain biking, and wake surfing. She enjoys helping her clients return to these sports stronger and more capable through both better understanding how to move from the greatest support and stability, and where tension (overactive muscle tissue) can be released in the body.
Rather than focusing on one area in isolation, we explore how different parts of your body may be contributing to what you feel. A shoulder issue may involve the ribs or thoracic spine. Hip discomfort may be influenced by the foot, pelvis, or trunk. Restricted movement in one area often creates adaptation somewhere else.
Myofascial techniques are often incorporated when useful, helping you explore the relationship between tissue tension, mobility, sensory awareness, and movement. The goal is not to impose a single idea of "perfect posture" or perfect movement. It is to help you create more options: more comfortable range of motion, better body awareness, greater stability and strength, and movement strategies that allow you to do more of what you love with confidence.
Life Coaching Through the Lens of Yoga Philosophy
Yoga offers much more than physical practice. Its teachings provide a framework for understanding how we relate to ourselves, other people, change, uncertainty, suffering, responsibility, acceptance, and growth.
1:1 coaching can help you apply these teachings to the circumstances of your actual life. You may be navigating a relationship, a transition, changing family dynamics, questions about boundaries or purpose, a recurring pattern you want to understand, or the tension between accepting what is and knowing when something needs to change. This work helps you develop greater discernment: the ability to see your situation more clearly, understand your own patterns and responses, recognize what is within your influence, and make choices that align with your values.
The teachings explored in Stephanie's upcoming book, Contemplate the Opposite: Traditional Yoga Wisdom for Modern Life & Relationships, provide a foundation for this work, bringing traditional yoga philosophy into conversation with the complexities of modern relationships and everyday life.
Longevity, Mindset, Menopause, &/or Nutrition
Midlife can ask us to reconsider strategies that may have worked for decades. Changes in hormones, body composition, muscle mass, recovery, sleep, stress tolerance, appetite, and metabolism can make it feel as though the rules suddenly changed. The answer is rarely to become more restrictive or simply work harder. Instead, coaching helps you understand what your body needs now.
Depending on your goals, we may explore nutrition habits, protein and overall nourishment, body composition, strength and muscle preservation, metabolic health, recovery, sleep, stress, mindset, consistency, and sustainable strategies for perimenopause and menopause.
If weight or body composition is part of your goal, it can be addressed without making the scale the sole measure of progress. Maintaining and building muscle, supporting bone health, improving metabolic health, increasing energy, and preserving physical independence become increasingly meaningful measures of health as we age.
The intention is to move away from extremes and toward habits you can actually live with: eating well without rigid dieting, becoming stronger without punishing your body, and learning how to adapt as your physiology changes.
Longevity is not simply about living longer. It is about maintaining the strength, energy, mobility, health, and freedom to participate fully in your life.
Personal Training, Strength & Physique Conditioning
Personal training is designed around your body, your goals, your experience, and your life. Sessions may combine progressive strength training, mobility, functional movement, body mechanics, metabolic conditioning, and physique-focused training depending on what you want to accomplish.
If you are new to strength training, you can learn how to lift with confidence and develop a strong foundation.
If you already train, we can refine technique, address movement limitations, create appropriate progressive overload, and develop a more intentional program.
If you are in midlife or beyond, strength training can become one of the most valuable investments you make in your future health. Building and maintaining muscle supports bone health, metabolic health, glucose regulation, balance, joint support, physical confidence, body composition, and your ability to remain capable and independent as you age.
Principles from Strength45, Stephanie's metabolic strength and physique-conditioning program, may be incorporated into your training. The approach emphasizes progressive strength, intelligent movement, adequate recovery, and challenging the body without assuming that pain, joint strain, or exhaustion are necessary for results. The aim is not simply to get through a workout. It is to build a body that continues to work for you.
Your Starting Point Is Your Starting Point
You do not need to arrive already fit, flexible, disciplined, pain-free, confident, or certain about what you need.
You may come because something hurts. Because menopause changed your body. Because you want to feel stronger. Because your relationship with food has become exhausting. Because you are entering a new chapter. Because you have spent years taking care of everyone else. Or simply because you know you want to feel better and you are not sure where to begin.
That is what individualized work is for. Together, we can identify what matters most right now, determine where change would have the greatest impact, and build practical strategies that support both your immediate goals and the person you want to be in the years ahead.
Stronger. More capable. More informed. More trusting of your body and yourself.
SAYF, YACEP, OES, ACE PT, CES, ERYT 500, AYC Level 3
BodyMind Fitness & Nutrition Consultant Certification 1998
Limited Availability for Private Sessions: Tuesdays 10:30-2:30
Email for Appointments: [email protected]
Sliding Scale $100-150 per session (50 min)
For Group Sessions, Steph teaches:
- Mondays Roll & Recovery Flow Noon: Yoga that focuses on breath, philosophy, functional movement guided by asana and energetic support from the bandhas. This class incorporates a foam roller as both a tool for releasing tension (overactive muscle tissue) and as an innovative yoga prop.
- Mon, Tues, Thurs and Sat mornings Strength45 Group Sessions
$25 Drop-In, 6 Sessions for $99, or $99/Month Unlimited
Register for "Online" version of the class for live-stream or recording (link sent after class and is good for 5 days)
Educational Platform for Yoga Teacher Mentoring and Education: www.sayfyoga.com
Stephanie brings over three decades of experience in fitness, yoga, movement education, nutrition, and personal development to her work with individual clients. Her approach is integrative and highly personalized, drawing from yoga philosophy, strength and functional movement training, orthopedic exercise, myofascial education, nutrition, mindset, and the lived experience of navigating the physical and emotional changes that come with midlife.
Rather than focusing on a single piece of the wellness puzzle, Stephanie helps clients understand how movement, nourishment, mindset, habits, nervous system health, and the way we relate to ourselves all influence one another. Her goal is to help each person develop practical tools that support greater strength, resilience, confidence, and well-being—not only for the present moment, but for the decades ahead.
1:1 Coaching & Personalized Training
Sometimes you know exactly what you need: a stronger body, better movement, support through menopause, help changing your relationship with food, or guidance through a difficult season of life. Other times, the pieces are harder to separate. How you move, eat, sleep, recover, think, respond to stress, and relate to yourself are deeply interconnected. Personalized 1:1 work gives you the opportunity to look at the whole picture and create an approach that fits your body, your life, and what matters most to you.
Sessions may focus primarily on one area or integrate several, including life coaching through yoga philosophy, menopause and longevity coaching, nutrition and mindset, orthopedic exercise and functional movement, myofascial work, and personalized strength training.
The goal is not perfection. It is to help you develop greater strength, clarity, confidence, resilience, and the practical skills to care for yourself well over the long term. Here are the four main areas that Steph has expertise in:
- Orthopedic Exercise, Posture & Functional Movement
- Life Coaching Through the Lens of Yoga Philosophy
- Longevity, Mindset, Menopause, &/or Nutrition
- Personal Training, Strength & Physique Conditioning
Orthopedic Exercise, Posture & Functional Movement
If something hurts, feels restricted, repeatedly becomes irritated, or simply does not move the way you would like, 1:1 movement work allows us to slow things down and look more closely. Your session may include assessment of posture, movement patterns, mobility, stability, body mechanics, muscular balance, compensation patterns, and functional strength.
Stephanie loves to play in the Gorge. Some of her favorite outdoor sports are skiing, mountain biking, and wake surfing. She enjoys helping her clients return to these sports stronger and more capable through both better understanding how to move from the greatest support and stability, and where tension (overactive muscle tissue) can be released in the body.
Rather than focusing on one area in isolation, we explore how different parts of your body may be contributing to what you feel. A shoulder issue may involve the ribs or thoracic spine. Hip discomfort may be influenced by the foot, pelvis, or trunk. Restricted movement in one area often creates adaptation somewhere else.
Myofascial techniques are often incorporated when useful, helping you explore the relationship between tissue tension, mobility, sensory awareness, and movement. The goal is not to impose a single idea of "perfect posture" or perfect movement. It is to help you create more options: more comfortable range of motion, better body awareness, greater stability and strength, and movement strategies that allow you to do more of what you love with confidence.
Life Coaching Through the Lens of Yoga Philosophy
Yoga offers much more than physical practice. Its teachings provide a framework for understanding how we relate to ourselves, other people, change, uncertainty, suffering, responsibility, acceptance, and growth.
1:1 coaching can help you apply these teachings to the circumstances of your actual life. You may be navigating a relationship, a transition, changing family dynamics, questions about boundaries or purpose, a recurring pattern you want to understand, or the tension between accepting what is and knowing when something needs to change. This work helps you develop greater discernment: the ability to see your situation more clearly, understand your own patterns and responses, recognize what is within your influence, and make choices that align with your values.
The teachings explored in Stephanie's upcoming book, Contemplate the Opposite: Traditional Yoga Wisdom for Modern Life & Relationships, provide a foundation for this work, bringing traditional yoga philosophy into conversation with the complexities of modern relationships and everyday life.
Longevity, Mindset, Menopause, &/or Nutrition
Midlife can ask us to reconsider strategies that may have worked for decades. Changes in hormones, body composition, muscle mass, recovery, sleep, stress tolerance, appetite, and metabolism can make it feel as though the rules suddenly changed. The answer is rarely to become more restrictive or simply work harder. Instead, coaching helps you understand what your body needs now.
Depending on your goals, we may explore nutrition habits, protein and overall nourishment, body composition, strength and muscle preservation, metabolic health, recovery, sleep, stress, mindset, consistency, and sustainable strategies for perimenopause and menopause.
If weight or body composition is part of your goal, it can be addressed without making the scale the sole measure of progress. Maintaining and building muscle, supporting bone health, improving metabolic health, increasing energy, and preserving physical independence become increasingly meaningful measures of health as we age.
The intention is to move away from extremes and toward habits you can actually live with: eating well without rigid dieting, becoming stronger without punishing your body, and learning how to adapt as your physiology changes.
Longevity is not simply about living longer. It is about maintaining the strength, energy, mobility, health, and freedom to participate fully in your life.
Personal Training, Strength & Physique Conditioning
Personal training is designed around your body, your goals, your experience, and your life. Sessions may combine progressive strength training, mobility, functional movement, body mechanics, metabolic conditioning, and physique-focused training depending on what you want to accomplish.
If you are new to strength training, you can learn how to lift with confidence and develop a strong foundation.
If you already train, we can refine technique, address movement limitations, create appropriate progressive overload, and develop a more intentional program.
If you are in midlife or beyond, strength training can become one of the most valuable investments you make in your future health. Building and maintaining muscle supports bone health, metabolic health, glucose regulation, balance, joint support, physical confidence, body composition, and your ability to remain capable and independent as you age.
Principles from Strength45, Stephanie's metabolic strength and physique-conditioning program, may be incorporated into your training. The approach emphasizes progressive strength, intelligent movement, adequate recovery, and challenging the body without assuming that pain, joint strain, or exhaustion are necessary for results. The aim is not simply to get through a workout. It is to build a body that continues to work for you.
Your Starting Point Is Your Starting Point
You do not need to arrive already fit, flexible, disciplined, pain-free, confident, or certain about what you need.
You may come because something hurts. Because menopause changed your body. Because you want to feel stronger. Because your relationship with food has become exhausting. Because you are entering a new chapter. Because you have spent years taking care of everyone else. Or simply because you know you want to feel better and you are not sure where to begin.
That is what individualized work is for. Together, we can identify what matters most right now, determine where change would have the greatest impact, and build practical strategies that support both your immediate goals and the person you want to be in the years ahead.
Stronger. More capable. More informed. More trusting of your body and yourself.
About Stephanie Adams Ruff
Sharing the awareness, acceptance, and transformation that yoga brings into our lives is what has inspired her to teach for over 30 years. She has seen in others—and experienced herself—that regular practice can cultivate greater peace, authenticity, connection, resilience, and joy.
Stephanie is a longevity-focused movement educator, yoga teacher, author, presenter, and founder of Flow Yoga Studio in Hood River, Oregon, where she has been teaching and leading community-based yoga and movement education since 2003. She is also the creator of SAYF Yoga Biomechanics and Movement Education, SAYF Myofascial Integration, and Strength45, and has trained more than 12,000 yoga teachers throughout the United States, Canada, and internationally.
Her work today bridges yoga philosophy, biomechanics, strength training, nervous system education, myofascial health, metabolic conditioning, nutrition, and sustainable movement practices across the lifespan. With decades of experience in yoga, fitness, cycling, strength conditioning, nutrition education, and teacher training, she has developed a particular passion for helping women move through midlife and menopause with greater strength, confidence, mobility, metabolic health, and self-trust.
Stephanie is an ACE Faculty member, ACE Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Orthopedic Exercise Specialist, E-RYT 500, YACEP, and AYC Level 3 Yoga Teacher. She holds a B.S. from Washington State University and completed her BodyMind Academy Fitness & Nutrition Consultant Certification in 1998. She is also a Moderation365 Certified Coach and holds certifications in SAYF Hatha Roll and SAYF Myofascial Integration.
Her Path of Yoga
Stephanie has been practicing yoga for more than 30 years. Her lineage is more like a family tree than a single line, reflecting decades of study with both Western and Indian teachers.
Her first teacher, Janet Brugge, introduced her to yoga in 1994. Janet's own teachers included Ganga White and Tracey Rich of the White Lotus Foundation. Stephanie continued her studies with YogaFit and a variety of Western teachers, including teacher training with Baron Baptiste.
In 2006, during her first yoga teacher training journey to India, Stephanie studied in Mysore with Jayakumar Swamysree, earning her 500-hour yoga teacher certification. Jayakumar, a professor of yoga and meditation at the University of Mysore, studied extensively across multiple Indian yoga traditions over four decades and served as an ambassador of yoga for the Government of India in Russia.
On her third journey to India, Stephanie met the teacher who would become one of the most important influences on her spiritual path, Swami Omkarananda of Rishikesh. Swamiji's own lineage reflects a tapestry of traditions, including Vedanta with Dayananda Saraswati, meditation with Swami Veda Bharati, Tibetan teachings with Lung Chu, kundalini practice with Yogananda Swamiji in Gangotri, and sannyasa with Kalyan Babaji. As a child, Swamiji also lived with Sri Anandamayi Ma. In 2017, he gifted Stephanie the Sanskrit name Pushti.
This diverse lineage continues to inform Stephanie's approach to teaching: honoring yoga as a living philosophical and contemplative tradition while remaining curious about what contemporary movement science, neuroscience, physiology, and human experience can add to our understanding.
Training Teachers & Creating SAYF
Stephanie's dedication to the path of yoga led her to fulfill a dream of opening a studio and building community in Hood River, Oregon, in 2003. After spending 12 years training teachers throughout North America for another school, she founded Jaya Yoga Registered Yoga School in 2011.
Since 2000, Stephanie has trained more than 12,000 teachers across the United States and Canada, teaching in 25 states and three Canadian provinces. Internationally, she has led teacher trainings and educational programs in Canada, Mexico, Italy, Bali, Portugal, Costa Rica, and seven times in India.
After more than 20 years of full-time teaching, Stephanie recognized a significant need within the yoga community for more accessible education in biomechanics, human movement, tissue health, and injury prevention. That recognition inspired her to create SAYF—Sustainable Asana Yoga Foundations, an educational system designed to bring anatomy and movement science into conversation with the traditional practice of yoga.
SAYF emphasizes progressive range of motion, intelligent biomechanics, myofascial health, nervous system awareness, functional strength, and movement strategies intended to help people practice and train in ways that are sustainable over a lifetime.
Educational Platform for Yoga Teacher Mentoring and Education: www.sayfyoga.com
Strength, Metabolic Health & Longevity
Stephanie has been an ACE Certified Personal Trainer since 1998 and became an ACE Orthopedic Exercise Specialist in 2016. Her work in fitness has evolved alongside her yoga teaching, with an increasing focus on strength, muscle, bone health, metabolic health, mobility, and maintaining physical capacity as we age.
She is the creator of Strength45, a metabolic strength and physique-conditioning program designed specifically with longevity in mind. Strength45 combines dumbbell strength training, bodyweight movement, progressive overload, metabolic chains, and rest-based interval training in a 45-minute format designed to support sustainable strength, bone health, muscle preservation, cardiovascular capacity, insulin sensitivity, and long-term functional resilience.
What makes Strength45 different is that it is not built around punishment, exhaustion, or the belief that harder is always better.
Using principles of SAYF Movement, exercises can be adapted to a progressive range of motion that is both pain- and strain-free while following movement pathways where unnecessary tissue strain, sprain, and wear are less likely to occur. The result is a joint-conscious approach to strength training designed for real bodies—especially adults in midlife and beyond, as well as anyone who wants to age well.
Stephanie challenges the assumption that injury is simply an inevitable part of strength training. Strength can be developed intelligently. Training can be challenging without being punishing. Progressive overload and joint health can coexist.
Strength45 is metabolic because it trains the body's ability to produce, use, and regulate energy efficiently. By combining strength-based movements with strategic pacing, progressive stimulus, and adequate recovery, the program supports muscle tissue, glucose regulation, cardiovascular demand, mitochondrial function, and post-exercise metabolic response.
In Stephanie's approach, metabolic fitness is not primarily about burning calories or shrinking the body. It is about building the physiological capacity to age with strength, energy, adaptability, independence, and freedom.
Menopause, Nutrition & the Personal Side of Longevity
Stephanie's perspective on menopause and longevity is professional, but it is also deeply personal. Over approximately three years during menopause, she gained 30 pounds despite feeling that she was doing "all the right things." She is now grateful for that experience because of what it taught her about metabolism, hormones, body composition, strength training, nutrition, diet culture, patience, body image, and self-trust.
The process of returning to optimal health was not quick. Over the following six years, Stephanie gradually changed the way she trained, ate, recovered, and thought about her body. She became leaner and significantly stronger while shifting her attention toward building muscle, protecting bone, improving metabolic health, and creating habits she could sustain for life.
As she approaches her 60th birthday in February 2027, Stephanie says she has never felt stronger or better in her body.
That lived experience now shapes the way she works with others. Rather than presenting menopause as a problem to overcome, she helps women understand how changing physiology may require changing strategies—and how strength, nourishment, recovery, stress regulation, consistency, and self-compassion can become powerful tools for the decades ahead.
Her broader approach to longevity is rooted in the belief that aging well is not about pushing harder, shrinking ourselves, or chasing youth. It is about building resilient tissue, strong bones, healthy muscle, metabolic capacity, nervous system flexibility, emotional honesty, and a more compassionate relationship with the body.
Author, Educator & Presenter
Stephanie is the author of the upcoming book Contemplate the Opposite: Traditional Yoga Wisdom for Modern Life & Relationships, an exploration of how yoga philosophy can help us navigate relationships, change, suffering, acceptance, discernment, and the complexities of modern life. She is also the author of Yoga and Cancer for the Cancer Exercise Training Institute.
Her educational work has reached well beyond the studio. Stephanie has appeared in the YogaFit Kids video/DVD and the YogaFit Level One, Level Four, and Anatomy Training DVDs. She has appeared several times on Seattle's Q13 Morning News as a yoga resource and has been featured on the Into Healing and Working in Yoga podcasts.
She has been a featured presenter at ACSM, NIRSA, TSI Summit, NW YogaFest, DCAC, Spinning, IDEA, and numerous YogaFit MindBody Fitness Conferences.
Through Flow Yoga, SAYF, teacher education, online programs, retreats, writing, and her work with individual clients, Stephanie continues to explore a question that has shaped her career for more than three decades:
How do we use the practices of yoga, movement, strength, and self-awareness to live with presence, capability, meaning, connection, and joy?
Sharing the awareness, acceptance, and transformation that yoga brings into our lives is what has inspired her to teach for over 30 years. She has seen in others—and experienced herself—that regular practice can cultivate greater peace, authenticity, connection, resilience, and joy.
Stephanie is a longevity-focused movement educator, yoga teacher, author, presenter, and founder of Flow Yoga Studio in Hood River, Oregon, where she has been teaching and leading community-based yoga and movement education since 2003. She is also the creator of SAYF Yoga Biomechanics and Movement Education, SAYF Myofascial Integration, and Strength45, and has trained more than 12,000 yoga teachers throughout the United States, Canada, and internationally.
Her work today bridges yoga philosophy, biomechanics, strength training, nervous system education, myofascial health, metabolic conditioning, nutrition, and sustainable movement practices across the lifespan. With decades of experience in yoga, fitness, cycling, strength conditioning, nutrition education, and teacher training, she has developed a particular passion for helping women move through midlife and menopause with greater strength, confidence, mobility, metabolic health, and self-trust.
Stephanie is an ACE Faculty member, ACE Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Orthopedic Exercise Specialist, E-RYT 500, YACEP, and AYC Level 3 Yoga Teacher. She holds a B.S. from Washington State University and completed her BodyMind Academy Fitness & Nutrition Consultant Certification in 1998. She is also a Moderation365 Certified Coach and holds certifications in SAYF Hatha Roll and SAYF Myofascial Integration.
Her Path of Yoga
Stephanie has been practicing yoga for more than 30 years. Her lineage is more like a family tree than a single line, reflecting decades of study with both Western and Indian teachers.
Her first teacher, Janet Brugge, introduced her to yoga in 1994. Janet's own teachers included Ganga White and Tracey Rich of the White Lotus Foundation. Stephanie continued her studies with YogaFit and a variety of Western teachers, including teacher training with Baron Baptiste.
In 2006, during her first yoga teacher training journey to India, Stephanie studied in Mysore with Jayakumar Swamysree, earning her 500-hour yoga teacher certification. Jayakumar, a professor of yoga and meditation at the University of Mysore, studied extensively across multiple Indian yoga traditions over four decades and served as an ambassador of yoga for the Government of India in Russia.
On her third journey to India, Stephanie met the teacher who would become one of the most important influences on her spiritual path, Swami Omkarananda of Rishikesh. Swamiji's own lineage reflects a tapestry of traditions, including Vedanta with Dayananda Saraswati, meditation with Swami Veda Bharati, Tibetan teachings with Lung Chu, kundalini practice with Yogananda Swamiji in Gangotri, and sannyasa with Kalyan Babaji. As a child, Swamiji also lived with Sri Anandamayi Ma. In 2017, he gifted Stephanie the Sanskrit name Pushti.
This diverse lineage continues to inform Stephanie's approach to teaching: honoring yoga as a living philosophical and contemplative tradition while remaining curious about what contemporary movement science, neuroscience, physiology, and human experience can add to our understanding.
Training Teachers & Creating SAYF
Stephanie's dedication to the path of yoga led her to fulfill a dream of opening a studio and building community in Hood River, Oregon, in 2003. After spending 12 years training teachers throughout North America for another school, she founded Jaya Yoga Registered Yoga School in 2011.
Since 2000, Stephanie has trained more than 12,000 teachers across the United States and Canada, teaching in 25 states and three Canadian provinces. Internationally, she has led teacher trainings and educational programs in Canada, Mexico, Italy, Bali, Portugal, Costa Rica, and seven times in India.
After more than 20 years of full-time teaching, Stephanie recognized a significant need within the yoga community for more accessible education in biomechanics, human movement, tissue health, and injury prevention. That recognition inspired her to create SAYF—Sustainable Asana Yoga Foundations, an educational system designed to bring anatomy and movement science into conversation with the traditional practice of yoga.
SAYF emphasizes progressive range of motion, intelligent biomechanics, myofascial health, nervous system awareness, functional strength, and movement strategies intended to help people practice and train in ways that are sustainable over a lifetime.
Educational Platform for Yoga Teacher Mentoring and Education: www.sayfyoga.com
Strength, Metabolic Health & Longevity
Stephanie has been an ACE Certified Personal Trainer since 1998 and became an ACE Orthopedic Exercise Specialist in 2016. Her work in fitness has evolved alongside her yoga teaching, with an increasing focus on strength, muscle, bone health, metabolic health, mobility, and maintaining physical capacity as we age.
She is the creator of Strength45, a metabolic strength and physique-conditioning program designed specifically with longevity in mind. Strength45 combines dumbbell strength training, bodyweight movement, progressive overload, metabolic chains, and rest-based interval training in a 45-minute format designed to support sustainable strength, bone health, muscle preservation, cardiovascular capacity, insulin sensitivity, and long-term functional resilience.
What makes Strength45 different is that it is not built around punishment, exhaustion, or the belief that harder is always better.
Using principles of SAYF Movement, exercises can be adapted to a progressive range of motion that is both pain- and strain-free while following movement pathways where unnecessary tissue strain, sprain, and wear are less likely to occur. The result is a joint-conscious approach to strength training designed for real bodies—especially adults in midlife and beyond, as well as anyone who wants to age well.
Stephanie challenges the assumption that injury is simply an inevitable part of strength training. Strength can be developed intelligently. Training can be challenging without being punishing. Progressive overload and joint health can coexist.
Strength45 is metabolic because it trains the body's ability to produce, use, and regulate energy efficiently. By combining strength-based movements with strategic pacing, progressive stimulus, and adequate recovery, the program supports muscle tissue, glucose regulation, cardiovascular demand, mitochondrial function, and post-exercise metabolic response.
In Stephanie's approach, metabolic fitness is not primarily about burning calories or shrinking the body. It is about building the physiological capacity to age with strength, energy, adaptability, independence, and freedom.
Menopause, Nutrition & the Personal Side of Longevity
Stephanie's perspective on menopause and longevity is professional, but it is also deeply personal. Over approximately three years during menopause, she gained 30 pounds despite feeling that she was doing "all the right things." She is now grateful for that experience because of what it taught her about metabolism, hormones, body composition, strength training, nutrition, diet culture, patience, body image, and self-trust.
The process of returning to optimal health was not quick. Over the following six years, Stephanie gradually changed the way she trained, ate, recovered, and thought about her body. She became leaner and significantly stronger while shifting her attention toward building muscle, protecting bone, improving metabolic health, and creating habits she could sustain for life.
As she approaches her 60th birthday in February 2027, Stephanie says she has never felt stronger or better in her body.
That lived experience now shapes the way she works with others. Rather than presenting menopause as a problem to overcome, she helps women understand how changing physiology may require changing strategies—and how strength, nourishment, recovery, stress regulation, consistency, and self-compassion can become powerful tools for the decades ahead.
Her broader approach to longevity is rooted in the belief that aging well is not about pushing harder, shrinking ourselves, or chasing youth. It is about building resilient tissue, strong bones, healthy muscle, metabolic capacity, nervous system flexibility, emotional honesty, and a more compassionate relationship with the body.
Author, Educator & Presenter
Stephanie is the author of the upcoming book Contemplate the Opposite: Traditional Yoga Wisdom for Modern Life & Relationships, an exploration of how yoga philosophy can help us navigate relationships, change, suffering, acceptance, discernment, and the complexities of modern life. She is also the author of Yoga and Cancer for the Cancer Exercise Training Institute.
Her educational work has reached well beyond the studio. Stephanie has appeared in the YogaFit Kids video/DVD and the YogaFit Level One, Level Four, and Anatomy Training DVDs. She has appeared several times on Seattle's Q13 Morning News as a yoga resource and has been featured on the Into Healing and Working in Yoga podcasts.
She has been a featured presenter at ACSM, NIRSA, TSI Summit, NW YogaFest, DCAC, Spinning, IDEA, and numerous YogaFit MindBody Fitness Conferences.
Through Flow Yoga, SAYF, teacher education, online programs, retreats, writing, and her work with individual clients, Stephanie continues to explore a question that has shaped her career for more than three decades:
How do we use the practices of yoga, movement, strength, and self-awareness to live with presence, capability, meaning, connection, and joy?