Neil Crenshaw – First Certified Teacher

Neil has completed all three parts of our certification program and we were very impressed by his dedication to his practices. Neil has a particular interest in teaching veterans about the benefits of yoga and meditation. Neil is located in McIntosh, Florida. At the bottom of this post you’ll find his contact information. Congratulations Neil!Here is Neil’s story:”After arriving home from Vietnam in 1968 I had malaria and depression. The malaria finally went away after five years but the depression lingered on for another 26 years.  In my depression everything for me was gray and drab. I considered suicide many times. And then in 1994 I discovered yoga and meditation. A yoga class was being offered for the first time at the college where I was teaching so I decided to try it. I remember walking out of the class, dripping with sweat, thinking “Where has this thing called yoga been all of my life?” I was hooked and continued practicing yoga every day on my own at home as well as in the yoga class. I immediately saw the benefits of yoga and realized its connection with the mind.

I asked the teacher about the connection and she gave me some information about her teacher Goswami Kriyananda. I began including meditation with my yoga practice and began seeing great results. By 1995 I was free of depression. I wanted to spread the word about yoga and help others so I looked for a way to get certified. There was no Yoga Alliance at that time so I got certified with the American Council on Exercise and began teaching yoga in 1997. I wanted to know more about yoga so I took a certification class taught by John De Minico in Atlanta and got certified with the American Sports Medicine Association in 2002.  I asked John how I might go about taking classes with the best yoga teachers in the U.S. and he recommended that I attend one of the yoga conferences sponsored by Yoga Journal. The next year (2003) I attended the Yoga Journal conference in Estes Park, Colorado and took classes with Rodney Yee, Swami Ramananda, Roger Cole, Shiva Rea, Julie Gudmestad and Douglas Brooks. That began a yearly ritual. I have attended the yoga conference in Estes Park every year since then.”