Our Leadership and Teachers
Ann Chrapkiewicz
Founder and Owner, Senior Teacher
With Ann’s guidance, Bikram Yoga students embark on a journey shaped by the wisdom she has cultivated since beginning her practice in 2003. With over 10,000 hours of teaching and the highest credentials available—the original Bikram Yoga Teacher Training (2004) and Level 3 with the Original Hot Yoga Association—students learn from someone authorized to carry forward the lineage and lead continuing education.
Furthermore, they benefit from a mentor whose perspective blends this deep training with master teachers—Sadhguru, Bikram & Rajashree Choudhury, Emmy Cleaves, Mary Jarvis, and Lahiri Shibendu—with academic expertise from graduate degrees at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Practitioners draw inspiration from her experience as a national yoga demonstration finalist, long-term Integral Anatomy student of Gil Hedley, and author of Hope for Autoimmune Disease. They also benefit from her learning and connections with Maren Nyer (Harvard, MGH) and Brian L. Tracy (Colorado State University), two important published authors of Bikram Yoga research.
Ann’s own path includes overcoming challenges in pregnancy, injury, and health—transforming fractured vertebrae, sports injuries, chronic pain, sciatica, carpal tunnel, seasonal depression, and movement dysfunction through dedicated practice. Her leadership as a long-term practitioner shows just one example of the diversity of obstacles that can be overcome with a long-term practice.
As each student steps into their own story of growth, Ann meets them in their uniqueness, offering the tools to overcome both physical and mental challenges. Through her guidance, thousands have moved toward living as their most empowered, free, connected, and joyful selves.
Ann is known locally and internationally for her impeccable attention to detail, encouraging & calm teaching style, her ability to give individual coaching to every student at their level, and her ability to weave yoga philosophy and physiological education into the smooth flow of traditional Bikram Yoga dialogue instruction. She regularly mentors yoga teachers around the country and the globe.
Ann enjoys working with youth & elderly alike, coaches, athletes, pregnant women, and those with limited mobility, chronic pain, paralysis, or injuries.
As a supplement to and extension of Bikram Yoga, she highly recommends Mary Jarvis’s Yoga Shapeshifting, and Sadhguru’s complete Inner Engineering Program.
Our Teachers and Experience
All instructors here are part of a direct and undiluted teaching lineage in the Calcutta tradition of Bishnu Ghosh and Bikram Choudhury. Our high teaching standards include a minimum of 500 practice hours before training, 500 hours of teacher training within the lineage, and a long-term apprenticeship with our school director.
Our standards for accepting trainees for apprenticeships are the highest in the state of Michigan, ensuring that all yoga students receive detailed attention on correct techniques and approaches. While each teacher has a unique approach and demeanor in the class, we encourage students to attend all teachers’ classes to get the most well-rounded experience and instruction. Read more about our teacher training and standards here.
Carolyn Meitz – Raja Yoga Academy Graduate, 2018
Yoga Is Medicine Leadership & Original Hot Yoga Teacher
Carolyn is a retired public school elementary teacher and musician. She began practicing Bikram Yoga in October 2014 to supplement strength training for triathlon training and found it to be much more therapeutic than she had ever imagined. Truly experiencing how yoga practice extends far beyond a yoga mat, she is grateful to have learned so much about gratitude, compassion, and presence through her Bikram Yoga practice. While a practitioner at Bikram Yoga Grand Rapids, Carolyn regularly attended Ann’s posture workshops here in East Lansing. She is truly a lifelong learner, and she is so grateful for the opportunity to share her love for this amazing yoga!
Erica Wolf – Yoga Is Medicine Teacher Apprenticeship, 2018-2020
Yoga Is Medicine Leadership & Original Hot Yoga Teacher
Erica began practicing Bikram Yoga in the fall of 2013 after having practiced several other forms of yoga since high school. Within a few months of practicing Bikram Yoga 3-4 times per week, her lifelong issues with blood sugar leveled off, and her pain from scoliosis went away.
In 2018, Erica practiced Rajashree’s Pregnancy Yoga in the hot room, throughout and following pregnancy with her second child. She completed her yoga teaching apprenticeship immersions with Ann from 2018-2020.
Marini Lee, Ph.D.
Leadership Team, Original Hot Yoga Teacher
Born in Oakland and raised in Richmond, California, Marini found her way from Stanford (B.A.) to Michigan State University (M.A. & Ph.D). She has been practicing the Original Hot Bikram Yoga for over 20 years. Her personal, professional, academic, and leadership experience in education and social justice is astounding. You can read or listen more about her genius here. Read more about her personal story of empowerment through Bikram Yoga here.
Lindsay Lake-Hefner
Leadership Team, Intermediate and Silent Class Leader
Lindsay’s practice of The Original Hot (Bikram) Yoga has taken place around the country and the globe! Since 2015 she has practiced here at Yoga Is Medicine, and in 2017 she participated in the USA Yoga Regional Asana Championships in Chicago, representing the state of Michigan. Lindsay is an architectural and business professional, marathon runner, and former dancer.
Kathy Fehrenbach
Leadership Team, Silent Class Leader, Yoga Shapeshifting Assistant
Kathy started practicing yoga in 2017, having accomplished a long career in public school teaching and distance running. Her story is featured in Hope for Autoimmune Disease, and she is our resident experiential expert on Rheumatoid Arthritis & the healing power of the combination of Bikram Yoga and Yoga Shapeshifting.
Amanda Frattarelli, Bikram Yoga Teacher Training 2006
Leadership Team, Visiting Bikram Yoga Teacher
Amanda started practicing the Original Hot Bikram Yoga in 2004. Based in the Ann Arbor yoga schools, she has served the Yoga Is Medicine community over the years as a regular and guest teacher. Her classes reveal a deep enthusiasm for the practice, and a lifelong dedication to the Ghosh and Yogananda yoga lineages.
Forrest Chrapkiewicz
Leadership Team, Lifetime Yoga Practice Exemplar
Forrest has been in the hot room since his conception; his mother taught and practiced for all 40 weeks of her pregnancy with him. Once an independent human being, Forrest practiced a few Bikram Yoga classes in early elementary school, and then began his regular floor series practice in earnest at age 9. His first full class was at age 11, and throughout the remainder of junior high and high school, he was the inspiration anchor of our weekly family and youth class. Forrest represented the State of Michigan at the USA Yoga National Asana Championship in 2019, where he placed 3rd in the Youth Boys Division. He practiced daily during the early weeks of the pandemic. Forrest knows teaching theory and practice discipline as well as he knows the English language.
Jennifer Schoon
Leadership Team & Silent Class Leader
Jen brings tremendous stillness, energy, and joy to her silent classes. She has been a practitioner of The Original Hot Bikram Yoga teacher here in East Lansing for ten years.
Angela Sinclair – Bikram Yoga Teacher Training Graduate, 2003
Visiting and Livestream Teacher; Founder and former owner of Bikram Yoga Kansas City
Angela was born with hip dysplasia and developed arthritis as a teenager. She struggled with pain, excess weight, and various forms of self-medication. In 2000 she took her first Bikram Yoga class in Boulder, Colorado. After completing Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in 2003, she taught in Lawrence, Kansas, and then went on to open Bikram’s Yoga College of India Kansas City in 2007. Angela has practiced with Mary Jarvis since 2004 and credits Bikram Yoga and Yoga Shapeshifting with the fact that she still has both of her natural hips – they are the only practices that take the pain away! Read Angela’s inspiring yoga story here!
“What I love about the yoga the most is the structure, the discipline, and the fact that I can handle my hardships and feel forgiveness and love from the depths of my heart and soul. That I walk without pain and with little limp. That I can be active without needing to take pain medications. That I can now tolerate all levels of temperatures…and I love that I sleep well. I love empowering people to find their fullest potential!”
Kavita Chowdhary – Bikram Yoga Teacher Training Graduate, 2013
Visiting Teacher
Kavita was raised in north India but has lived and raised her family in Hyderabad, India, for the past 20 years. She started practicing yoga in 2004 after complications from a cesarean section led to intense and chronic pain.
Several years later she was introduced to Bikram Yoga and has never looked back. Kavita attended Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in Phuket, Thailand in 2013. In 2016, she founded and directed Bikram Yoga Telangana in Hyderabad, India.
Kavita is a longtime friend of our yoga school and comes to learn, teach, and practice yoga in East Lansing whenever she can!
Her commitment to posture technique, intelligent teaching, and lifelong learning are just a few of the amazing qualities she brings to her classes.
Becoming an Original Hot Yoga (Bikram Yoga) Teacher
Teacher Training
One of our missions at Yoga Is Medicine is to raise and sustain the bar for yoga teaching, in order to retain and transmit the principles of 20th century therapeutic hatha yoga to the interested public, and in order to provide the maximum benefit to every level of yoga student.
While most yoga classes and studios in North America have shifted to a mix-and-match fitness class model, we retain and educate our students in the elements of a single lineage of therapeutic hatha yoga. This requires significant dedication and investment of practice and study on the part of every teacher.
Most yoga studios in the United States hold teacher trainings as a necessary part of their bottom line, and accept any and all interested students. Many teacher trainers at these programs are relatively new teachers themselves, often having less than 5 years of practice or teaching experience. These programs allow you to pay for use of the RYT designation with Yoga Alliance.
We do not participate in this business or affiliation model, as it quickly dilutes and weakens traditional practices and creates a competitive, unsustainable situation.
Instead we endeavor to selectively invite seasoned practitioners, leaders, and disciplined practitioners to carry on the lineage to the next generations. All of our teachers exceed the minimum training standards of the Original Hot Yoga Association, which themselves far exceed those set by Yoga Alliance.
For students who want to deepen their practice, we regularly hold continuing education programs, intermediate classes, Yoga Studies Immersions, and visiting teacher workshops.
Before being invited or recommended to train and apprentice as a teacher, we require the following:
- A minimum of 2 years of consistent, mindful practice at Yoga Is Medicine
- Exemplary discipline and positive leadership inside and outside of the yoga room: in practice, word, care of facilities, actions, and encouragement of others
- Commitment to maintain the integrity of the Ghosh-Bikram lineage and approaches
- Record of and commitment to support and contribute positively to the Yoga Is Medicine community, in word and action
- Commitment to a long-term mentorship relationship with Ann and other senior lineage teachers, for the benefit of yoga students and integrity of the practice
- If desiring to expand the community of practitioners to another school, agreement to take it to an area no less than 25 miles from Yoga Is Medicine, in order to bring the yoga to those who do not yet have access
Training Programs
Once accepted as a trainee, there are several components of training, including class observations, mentorship discussions, residential/immersive training, student-teaching at Yoga Is Medicine, and ongoing teacher mentorship courses.
We support the following training programs as part of the complete Yoga Is Medicine Training and Student-Teaching process:
Bikram Yoga Teacher Training
The original Bikram Yoga teacher training run by Bikram Choudhury and senior mentoring teachers from around the world. Held at various international locations once or twice per year for 9 consecutive weeks. 500+ hours, residential.
Yoga Is Medicine Long-Term Apprenticeship
500+ hours, local and away. Yoga Is Medicine Owner Ann Chrapkiewicz is approved as a Level 3 teacher with the Original Hot Yoga Association and qualified to lead teacher trainings and continuing education in the lineage. Short-term immersions with Ann and other senior teachers in the lineage are also required as part of this program. Once initial prerequisites have been met, please contact Ann for more details.
Ghosh’s Yoga College Therapeutic Yoga Training
For those wishing to work with students one-on-one to prescribe therapeutic exercises in the Ghosh lineage, this 3-week study is directed by Muktamala Mitra, granddaughter of Bishnu Ghosh. Held at Ghosh’s Yoga College in Calcutta, India. Residential. This course does not prepare you to lead a group class but does deepen your knowledge and understanding of therapeutic indications. Detailed program information can be found here.