Rolf Gates

Rolf Gates is a vinyasa yoga and meditation teacher and the author of Meditations from the Mat, a book of daily reflections that walks through the eight limbs of yoga and has become a standard companion for students and teacher trainees. Raised around Boston in a family with a long line of ministers, he served as a US Army Ranger and later worked as a social worker before yoga and meditation became his life's work. He leads the Kripalu School of Yoga, teaching on its 200-hour and advanced trainings, and has run his own vinyasa intensives and teacher trainings in the United States and abroad for many years.

His teaching joins a strong, flowing physical practice with Buddhist-influenced mindfulness and the ethical teachings of the Yoga Sutras, and he speaks plainly about using practice to meet ordinary life with steadiness and kindness. Through his own Gates Yoga he offers self-paced online 200-hour and 300-hour vinyasa trainings with one-to-one mentoring, an online studio with weekly live classes and a library of recorded practices, and seasonal study groups for teachers on pranayama and meditation. A second book of reflections, Meditations on Intention and Being, followed in 2015, and he wrote the children's partner-yoga book Yoga Friends with Mariam Gates.