Instructors

Peggy Hong
All paths lead to yoga. Teaching yoga is one of the most difficult and fulfilling activities I’ve ever engaged in, but it brings together all of my interests: body/mind integration, art and creativity, science, language, spirituality, meditation, interpersonal relations, community building, and peacemaking. I am grateful to my students and colleagues who support and encourage me in this challenging task.

My yoga practice began in earnest in 1996, when my youngest child started school. At first, I used yoga to complement my dance training and my work as a performer and choreographer. Over time, the yoga practice became larger and larger. I began teaching yoga in 2001, when I realized that in order to keep growing in my own practice, I needed to share my learning with others. I’ve taught yoga to students at Alverno College, Milwaukee Yoga Center, The Aveda Institute for Beauty and Wellness, Shorewood High School, Tamarack Community School, Public Allies, and more. I am also a published poet, fiction writer, and creative writing instructor, and I teach workshops that combine yoga and movement with writing.

I'm a certified Intermediate Junior 1 yoga instructor through IYNAUS (Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States), and continue advanced yoga studies with senior teachers Chris Saudek and Lois Steinberg, among others. In July 2005 and January 2008, I traveled to Pune, India to study directly with the Iyengars at their Institute. I’m the mother of 3 young adult children (who all practice yoga) and I live with my husband along the Milwaukee river. I’m a peace activist, Waldorf school parent, and proponent of everything that contributes to community, sustainability, and wellness. Visit my blog at: stillinsirsasana.blogspot.com.

Annie Melchior
has been a student of yoga, particularly Iyengar yoga, since the summer of 1995. Since then, she has studied with senior teachers Mary Dunn, Lois Steinberg, Faeq Biria, Kevin Gardiner, Gabriel Halpern, Manuso Manos, Rajiv Chanchani and Kofi Bosa. She continues to pursue intensive teacher training with senior teachers Chris Saudek and Laurie Blakeney. She has been teaching since February of 2000, and brings great attention, vitality and good humor to her classes. In 2003, Annie was voted best yoga instructor by the Milwaukee Shepherd Express Reader’s Poll.

Alex Hansen
holds a B.F.A. degree as well as the preliminary level of certification for Teaching Yoga in the method of B.K.S. Iyengar. He has been studying and practicing Iyengar Yoga since 1998. He has been teaching yoga as his full time vocation since the year 2001. His teaching focuses on careful alignment of both body and mind through the precise instruction of the yoga poses. The greater goal of his teaching is the cultivation of healthful and mindful living. This is brought to light in his occasional philosophical points and parallels derived from the yoga poses and the experiences they create.

Jean Torrey-Canney
Jean has practiced yoga since 1990 and began teaching in the Iyengar tradition in 2003. In college she studied Eastern religions while majoring in education. She attended Tai chi classes, meditation retreats and pursued the mind body connection. Her attraction to the Iyengar method complimented her approach to early childhood education which was focused on the Montessori method and taught that learning comes about from first focusing on the concrete and then moving on to the abstract. Mr. Iyengar teaches that first we work with our students on the mechanics of the outer body and the base of the pose and then work towards the inner body. He gives his students a very concrete method on which to build their practice.
Jean passed the first half of her Iyengar certification process in 2008. Since 2003 she has attended numerous workshops with Manuso Manos, Gabriel Halpern, Kevin Gardiner, John Friend, Patricia Walden, and Rajiv Chanchani. Jean has attended a weeklong intensive with B.K.S. Iyengar on his trip to the United States in 2000 and most recently attended a weeklong intensive with Geeta Iyengar in British Columbia. Since 2004 she has attended intensive teacher trainings with senior teacher Chris Saudek. This coming year she will attend trainings with Eddy Marks and Mary Obendorfer.
In class Jean conveys to her students her passion for yoga and the connection between the mind and body. Her hope for each student is that they continue on the path of yoga and learn to incorporate it into their daily life.

Helena Fahnrich
Helena began studying yoga in 2004 when she took her first class at UWM. During this time, she attended numerous workshops with senior Iyengar teachers throughout the midwest and both the east and west coast. She began teaching yoga in 2006; recently she started the process of Iyengar certification, and in 2007 attended multiple teacher training workshops in the southwest and midwest.
Drawing stability, understanding, and experience from her personal practices as well as from her practice time with teachers and fellow students has fostered her dedication to the development and perpetuation of Iyengar yoga in general.

Jacqueline Lalley
Jacqueline began practicing Iyengar yoga in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Madison, where she studied with Faith Russell. After living in Massachusetts for two years and Chicago for ten, she moved to Milwaukee in 2004 and began studying with Peggy Hong at the Riverwest Yogashala. She has taken workshops with Chris Saudek and Lois Steinberg. Jackie started teaching yoga in 2009.
Jackie writes jokes for The Onion and is a contributor to WUWM's Lake Effect, Milwaukee Magazine, Bitch Magazine, and other venues. She finds that teaching yoga, like writing, involves precise, enthusiastic expression of ideas that can help people learn, grow, and enjoy and deepen life.
Jackie lives in Riverwest with her husband, Michael Groen, and their cat, Olive. She is a communications consultant for nonprofits and is on the board of Woodland Pattern Book Center. She plays string bass in the Milwaukee Community Orchestra.

Lynn Celek
Lynn Celek first became a student of hatha yoga eleven years ago. Several years into her practice she found Iyengar yoga and was immediately drawn to the style’s focus on precise alignment through meticulous instruction and the use of props. She is currently training with Peggy Hong at the Riverwest Yogashala. Lynn also has completed a yoga teacher training certification program through Kanyakumari, a yoga and ayurveda school based in Milwaukee..
She currently teaches yoga at Core/El Centro and The Bay View Community Center. Lynn is also enrolled in the second year ayurveda program at Kanyakumari. She hopes to combine her love of yoga and ayurveda to help teach people how to care for their physical bodies, quiet their minds, and open their hearts.

Solange Da Silva Gonske
Solange began her study of Iyengar Yoga in New Orleans, Louisiana with Becky Lloyd in 2005. Since she moved to Wisconsin she has been apprenticing with Peggy Hong. She continues her studies with Peggy Hong, Lois Steinberg, Rebecca and Dean Learner, Mary Obendorfer, Eddie Marks and other Senior Iyengar Teachers. She has attended teacher training with Sharon Conroy and Lois Steinberg (2007- 2010). She is an active member of Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States (IYNAUS). She received her B.S. in Health and Physical Education from the University of New Orleans in 1996. She has always been concerned about physical and mental well-being. She loves hiking, dancing, playing capoeira (Brazilian Martial Art); but it was through Iyengar yoga that she found inner peace. She encourages everyone to embrace Iyengar yoga.