Jurian Hughes

Jurian Hughes is a yoga, dance and voice teacher in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and one of the longest-serving teachers at the Kripalu School of Yoga, where she has helped train well over a thousand yoga teachers since 2006. Before yoga became her vocation she worked for many years as an actor on and off Broadway, in film, television and voice-over, after studying at Williams College and taking an MFA at NYU's Tisch School. That stage background runs through her teaching: she founded the Yoga of Voice, which joins chanting, breath and posture with theatre voice work to help people speak and express themselves more freely, co-created The Yoga of Yes, and trains teachers in the Let Your Yoga Dance method.

Her classes are warm, candid and often funny, and they aim at joy and self-acceptance as much as at strength or flexibility. She teaches a live online gentle Kripalu class each week with recordings and a large on-demand library, sees students one to one at her home studio or online for yoga, voice coaching and mentoring, and has released recorded practices including a gentle Kripalu yoga video and a chakra yoga class. She leads weekend programmes at Kripalu several times a year and small-group retreats abroad, in places such as Mexico, Greece, Scotland and Kenya.