TRAINING INSTRUCTORS
Briana Ward, Owner/Director, E-RYT 500
Briana Ward was born is Salt Lake City, Utah and spent her childhood learning to love music and the outdoors. She attended Utah State University on a full music scholarship and majored in music education. While in school she developed a passion for learning and teaching that have carried her through life. After suffering for years from debilitating back pain and trying everything she could looking for relief, she turned to yoga trying to avoid surgery. Yoga has been played a key roll in pain management and mobility and is now a way of life. Briana is a RYT-E500 with more then 10,000 hrs of teaching under her belt. She has worked with many student helping them to build custom practices around their needs. She has studied many styles of yoga with many different teachers throughout the United States but has a practice that is based in the Iyengar lineage. She has had the opportunity to spend some time in Bali and Thailand furthering her practice and education with some of the best teachers from around the world. A military wife, she has been blessed with the opportunity of living in many different places but is happy to call Chesapeake, VA home along with her husband (a navy musician) and her 3 sons.
Graham Schweig, Ph.D., E-RYT 500
Graham M. Schweig, Ph.D. has been a serious practitioner of yoga for over 40 years. He is an author and translator of sacred yoga texts from the Sanskrit, a leader of yoga seminars and workshops, and a university professor of religion who teaches about the universal messages of the heart. Graham was part of the yoga explosion of the sixties, and from that time has traveled to and lived in India several times and learned yoga under the guidance of traditional teachers. He is founder and teacher of The Secret Yoga Seminars with Catherine Ghosh, which presents
the classical yoga from the Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga Sutra, and the Upanishads, designed to enhance the yoga practice of any sincere practitioner. Graham earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Comparative Religion, and his specialization is in the areas of the history and philosophy of yoga, the spiritual traditions of India, and the mystical traditions of divine love. He is an internationally sought out speaker and a regularly invited lecturer at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. For many years he has been offering yoga workshops, and contributes to teacher training at Chesapeake Hot Yoga, in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, and has also offered seminars at Jivamukti (NYC), East West Living (NYC), Yogaville (VA), and has been a regularly invited presenter at the Yoga Journal Conferences, among others. Graham was also invited to be the keynote speaker at Washington, DC's first Global Mala, delivering the opening "Dharma talk" to about 400 yoga teachers and practitioners (see the YouTube video here). Graham is also recognized by the Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT 500. His recent book from HarperOne, BHAGAVAD GITA: THE BELOVED LORD'S SECRET LOVE SONG, reveals hidden teachings on yoga that can powerfully enhance anyone's practice and teaching of yoga. His first book, DANCE OF DIVINE LOVE: INDIA'S CLASSIC SACRED LOVE STORY, published by Princeton University Press, brings out in translation and commentary, a passage from the Bhagavata text that constitutes a vision of the most exalted arena within the yoga of the heart. He has several more books in progress, including an illuminating translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra and the Bhakti Sutra. For more information on Graham and his activities, see Secret Yoga and on Facebook.
Sarah Hedquist, LPTA, BS
Sarah Hedquist attended the Tidewater Community College Physical Therapist Assistant Program and graduated Suma Cum Magna with the Clinical Excellence Award in 2015. She has been working in Pediatric Sports Medicine at CHKD since 2015. In 2019 Sarah earned her BS in Health Science Management from the School of Continuing and Professional Education at the University of Virginia and has since secured a position as an adjunct professor at Tidewater Community College as part of their PTA program. Sarah is incredibly passionate about the human body, how it functions and promoting healthy function through movement.