Our Team
Meet the heart of Highland Park Yoga. Our experienced teachers each bring their own style, energy, and passion to every class — creating a welcoming community where everyone can grow, move, and feel their best.
Between effort and equanimity, strength and serenity and power and grace is the space where I believe yoga lives. Yoga means to yoke, to come together, to make whole. As someone who has been practicing yoga for twenty one years and teaching for 17 years, I am dedicated to the promise of yoga, the principle of uniting body, mind and soul.The body was meant to move, Yoga has proven to mirror my strong belief that a healthy life delivers a clear mind and an elevated spirit. I teach strong yet playfully accessible power vinyasa flow classes. I encourage synchronized breathing and sound alignment. The true seed of the yoga practice is the breath. Expect an emphasis on core strength and heat producing asanas through dynamic and innovative sequencing. My classes include various sun salutations, standing and seated postures and occasionally arm balances and inversions-all at an appropriate and respectful pace for those who join. What I enjoy most about teaching yoga is the community that forms from the four corners of each student's individual mat. To witness students move in and out of postures with such grace and ease brings me such joy. I am equally proud to be a student. Rolling out my mat alongside other like-minded souls is a true gift that never fails to offer me pure peace and happiness.
Mariann Fishbein
I have enjoyed physical movement my whole life. A runner, a walker, exercise class participant, hockey mom, to name a few! Yoga was the first discipline that provided me with a true mind and body connection. My journey with yoga is a deep one. I didn't "find" yoga, I truly feel it found me. The synchronicity of breath to movement prevents a wandering mind. Yoga has helped remind me to live in the moment and focus on what I have, not what has been or what may be. After many years of practicing, in 2016 I completed my 200 hour RYT training with Gina Marciano. Not long after, I took an inferno hot pilates class. The format of this mind and body physically challenging discipline was intriguing. Admittedly obsessed with the benefits this workout offered, I completed formal inferno hot pilates training with founder Gabi Walters in 2018. I was immediately hooked on something that moved me physically and mentally. The strength I have developed through a daily practice of Inferno Pilates has made me a stronger person on and off the mat. “ If I can help one person feel the benefits the way I have, then it’s all worth it."
The most difficult thing about Inferno Hot Pilates is starting. IHP is not a traditional Pilates class but a high intensity interval training (HIIT)low impact class using Pilates principles. Students will get an incredible, heart-pumping, sweat-dripping workout. The body will continue to burn calories well after the workout is done just to get your systems back to normal. This workout never gets easier- but the student gets stronger.
Amy McGowan
Julia teaches Vinyasa flow and aims to bring positive energy to this moving meditation practice linking traditional poses with deep breathing. Julia’s yoga journey began nearly two decades ago while obtaining her law degree. She immediately fell in love with the ancient healing practice of yoga. Julia has studied with many teachers over the years and will forever be a student. Julia’s yoga philosophy is to let go of the ego, challenge the mind and body, release negativity, breathe, sweat, find freedom, and know the journey never ends. When Julia is not on her mat she loves to spend time in the great outdoors with her husband, two children, and dog.