Our Retreat Leaders
Don’t be perfect, be authentic.
Experienced leaders guiding you through your self empowerment journey.
Amanda Mendez
I am so grateful that every day I get to wake up with an opportunity to inspire, empower, and motivate humans to show up to the best of their ability, it just so happens to be by sharing my passion, gift, love for yoga.
The more time I dedicated to my practice and teaching my more I felt alive, awakened, and closer to just being me. Each step took me further along my path, developing my own class structured to work with athletes and active living lifestyles, and eventually landing me on my yoga mat for my very first Baptiste practice. This is where my practice, teaching started to feel more at “home” not only on my mat, but how I would show up and speak to my students as I guided practice. In 2018, I knew I needed an outlet to share my passion for yoga differently than I had been doing before and I opened my own studio, Authentic Yoga Studio. There has been so many incredible opportunities that I would have never imagined I would have created. Not only have I been able to train with globally renowned yogi Baron Baptiste, I have been fortunate enough to have over 10,000 teaching hours in the last 6 years with all sort of students in many walks of life and hopefully at least one of them have been able to find the same magic in yoga that most others have as well. It’s why the practice of yoga will always be part of my life.
Dan Nevins
Dan discovered the life-changing power of yoga, which has enabled him to heal from the invisible wounds of war in a way that nothing else could. He quickly realized that other wounded warriors could benefit from yoga in the same way and knew he had to become an instructor. Dan became a Baptiste Yoga teacher in 2015, and is now a Tier 3 Certified Baptiste Yoga Influencer. Dan incorporates the notion of “yoga for every-body” into his speeches and classes, encouraging people from all walks of life – and veterans in particular – to take up the practice.
Word of Dan’s efforts spread quickly, and he has been invited to teach yoga throughout the world, from the White House in Washington, DC to the Africa Yoga Project in Nairobi, Kenya. Nowadays, when he’s not leading classes for hundreds of participants, Dan can usually be found sharing his passion for life, WWP, yoga and his fellow wounded warriors with the attendees of major events ranging from the Bank of America 500 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway to the Wisdom 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.