Cristi Christensen

Cristi Christensen is a yoga teacher based in Los Angeles whose classes mix chakra work, dance, breath and live music. Before yoga she competed as a gymnast and platform diver and trained alongside the US Olympic diving squad, until an injury closed that path. She went on to study kinesiology and spent more than ten years learning from Shiva Rea, Saul David Raye and Seane Corn. From 2005 to 2014 she directed the Exhale Center for Sacred Movement in Venice, California, and she later set up Kirana, her own 500-hour yoga school.

The chakras sit at the centre of her teaching. Her 2021 book from St. Martin's, Chakra Rituals, sets out a seven-week programme with a chakra for each week and daily breath, meditation and movement practices. With the house DJ Marques Wyatt she leads Deep Exhale, where a yoga class turns into a dance gathering. She also gives tarot readings, a practice she took up with her teacher Brenda Rose in 2018, offers Reiki, runs somatic sound rituals in Los Angeles and online, sells recorded courses, and leads retreats and trainings in the United States, Mexico and abroad.