Jennifer Reis

Jennifer Reis grew up in western Canada and first worked as a visual artist, taking a fine arts degree and showing her work across the country while also studying Buddhism and other Eastern religions. Yoga and meditation took hold during her student years. She completed her first teacher training at Kripalu in 1996, taught for a long stretch in Toronto, and later came to Kripalu as a volunteer, joining its faculty in 2001. Since then she has directed the centre's 200-hour teacher trainings and taught in its school of integrative yoga therapy, and she is a certified yoga therapist with training in massage, shiatsu and Ayurvedic bodywork.

She has created two methods of her own. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra is a lying-down guided meditation that moves through the five koshas, or layers of being, using a heartfelt intention (sankalpa) and imagery taken from nature. Five Element Yoga ties postures, breath, mudras, self-massage and meridian work to earth, water, fire, air and ether, drawing on yoga, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. Her yoga nidra recordings have sold strongly in the Kripalu shop for many years. She runs a live online studio with a weekly yoga nidra class and six-week series, offers on-demand collections, and trains teachers online and at Kripalu, with several thousand graduates so far.