Meet Christa, Founder of Compass Yoga

Christa Avampato, RYT and certified yoga therapist
Founder of Compass Yoga

I founded Compass Yoga as a means to provide the mental and physical benefits of yoga to people who would not or could not access yoga through the traditional studio model. Since its founding I have become particularly focused on therapeutic yoga and its application as part of an overall health and wellness plan.

Through the generosity of a close friend, I found my way to yoga as a way to heal the effects on my body and mind brought on by years of trauma, insomnia, extreme stress, and anxiety. Seeing the toll that these conditions were taking on me, my friend, who was also an Iyengar yoga instructor, offered to give me free individual yoga classes based upon my personal schedule. I tried to think of every excuse to not take up his offer, but he wouldn’t let me off the hook without at least giving yoga a try. He even bought me a mat! From my first class, I knew that I had been offered something very special. My friend’s only request was that I pay it forward if I found yoga useful. My friend’s request was the tiny seed that has bloomed into Compass Yoga 11 years later.

In May 2010, I completed my 200-hour teacher training with Sonic Yoga in New York City. I am a certified yoga therapist through Integral Yoga Institute New York, having completed their therapeutic yoga teacher training with Cheri Clampett and Arturo Peal.

Prior to Sonic, I taught a weekly restorative yoga class at the University of Virginia from 2005-2007 when I was enrolled in the MBA program at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. That class was based upon yoga techniques that I learned through Beth Shaw’s Yoga Fit training in 2004 and primarily focused on providing stress reduction for Darden students. I now teach at Columbia Law School, Columbia University Medical Center, the New York Public Library, and New York Methodist Hospital, and offer group and private sessions through Compass Yoga.

My primary interest in teaching yoga is to help students at every level discover their own confidence, strength, courage, and ability to self-heal. I view teaching yoga as a service and it is a great privilege to work with students on their personal goals. Yoga has helped me alleviate my life-long difficulties with insomnia, recovery from several episodes of PTSD, and is largely responsible for my professional success in a variety of fields because it reinforced my inner strength and greatly reduced my stress and anxiety levels.

I look forward to helping you build your own personal practice that helps you take your life in any direction you want to go!

Namaste,
Christa

Read my personal blog at http://christainnewyork.com
Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/christanyc