Starseed Announces New Owners!
Please welcome Amy Para and Michael Cipriano as the new owners of the landmark yoga studio. They will both be working hard at the many jobs it takes to run Starseed. Most importantly, Amy and Michael are committed to continuing and breathing new life into Jyoti's great work.
Amy has been a part of our community for ten years. She graduated from our 500-hour training program in 2004 and promptly began teaching for us from 2004 through 2006. She was a mentor in the last 500-hour training program.
After working in the corporate world for many years, Michael embarked on a journey to integrate his passion for psychology and spirituality. Michael has been practicing astrology and counseling for many years and his approach is humanistic and spiritual, blending ancient astrological techniques with modern personal growth principles.
Moving forward, Amy and Michael would like to continue the Starseed legacy and will inevitably start to add their creative presence and contribute their special abilities toward the running of Starseed.
Jyoti Chrystal, ERYT , Founder and Director of Starseed Yoga (1944-2009)
Jyoti was an exceptionally loved wife, mother, teacher, yogini, and shaman. She enjoyed 35 years of international teaching experience in yoga, meditation, and the healing arts with strong focus on shamanism. She shared her vision of yoga and shamanic healing in part with the support of her loving partner and husband, Dr. Jason Martin. Her yoga career included study with B.K.S. Iyengar in India, Ashtanga with Alan Bates, and other senior teachers such as Aadil Paklavalaha, Gabriela Giubilaro, Lois Steinberg, Kofi Busia, Mukunda Styles in Structural Theraphy, and many others.
For the first 13 years of her yoga journey, she was a disciple of Jain master Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, to whom she credits her initial awakening. While living in Brazil during the 70s and early 80s she apprenticed in various forms of shamanism and founded a yoga center there. Upon her return to North America she became a student of Angeles Arrian's Four Fold Way for 7 years and also worked with Alberto Villodo. In 1988, Jyoti was initiated into the Peruvian shamanic lineage of the Andes by Don Calderon and received second degree initiation into Amazonian shamanism by Don Austin Rivas Vasquez.
Jyoti used the shamanic tools of journeywork, sopla (Amazonian tobacco and sacred herbs), sacred songs, Gestalt therapy and the very practical use of the universal teachings of ahimsa in her unique Shamanic Empowerment Coaching to assist clients, individually or together as a couple, in their soul retrieval work. She believed in living a "life worth dying for."
Jyoti worked with White Wind Weaver and was trained in the Art of Life coaching method. Jyoti’s Tibetan Buddhist teachers of the Dzogchen tradition include Ontil Rimpoche, Lama Kunga and Lama Rangbar all of whom are frequent visitor teachers at Starseed.
Aside from directing Starseed specific yoga programs in multiple locations, Jyoti directed the notable Starseed Yoga Teacher Training Program (SSYTT) (500-hr, 9-month apprenticeship, and the 200-hr versions), and is the inspiration behind the Feminine Wisdom program. In addition, Jyoti founded the Starseed Educational Company, a non-profit branch of Starseed, dedicated to bringing yoga, meditation and healing into sectors of the community afflicted by drug, alcohol addiction and abuse issues for battered women.
Jyoti was a licensed minister performing weddings, christening and naming ceremonies, rites of passages and coming of age ceremonies, funerals and memorial services. Her abilities were recognized by several magazines such as Yoga Journal, Yoga 411, “Yoga Basics” yoga classes on local cable TV, and numerous featured studio awards both locally and nationally over the course of career.
Our beloved JyotiMa will be remembered for her intense passion, love, and laughter of teaching and healing herself and the rest of us with deep love and gratitude.
Dr. Jason Martin, previous co-director of Starseed Yoga
Jason has a background in academia: He was educated at Yale University and the University of Rochester, and his disciplines include medieval studies and comparative literature. Jason has a particular interest in the esoteric significance of the Arthurian mythos and the Grail quest. Jason studied Insight Meditation with Sri Gowenka in India and continues to study Shamanism in Peru with Don Agustin Rivas-Vasquez. He is a shamanic hypnosis specialist and Empowerment Therapist trained in Heart-Centered Gestalt Therapy. He is certified in the areas of both Gestalt therapy and hypnotherapy, and he maintains a private practice in addition to his work at Starseed.
Amy has been a part of our community for ten years. She graduated from our 500-hour training program in 2004 and promptly began teaching for us from 2004 through 2006. She was a mentor in the last 500-hour training program.
After working in the corporate world for many years, Michael embarked on a journey to integrate his passion for psychology and spirituality. Michael has been practicing astrology and counseling for many years and his approach is humanistic and spiritual, blending ancient astrological techniques with modern personal growth principles.
Moving forward, Amy and Michael would like to continue the Starseed legacy and will inevitably start to add their creative presence and contribute their special abilities toward the running of Starseed.
Jyoti Chrystal, ERYT , Founder and Director of Starseed Yoga (1944-2009)
For the first 13 years of her yoga journey, she was a disciple of Jain master Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, to whom she credits her initial awakening. While living in Brazil during the 70s and early 80s she apprenticed in various forms of shamanism and founded a yoga center there. Upon her return to North America she became a student of Angeles Arrian's Four Fold Way for 7 years and also worked with Alberto Villodo. In 1988, Jyoti was initiated into the Peruvian shamanic lineage of the Andes by Don Calderon and received second degree initiation into Amazonian shamanism by Don Austin Rivas Vasquez.
Jyoti used the shamanic tools of journeywork, sopla (Amazonian tobacco and sacred herbs), sacred songs, Gestalt therapy and the very practical use of the universal teachings of ahimsa in her unique Shamanic Empowerment Coaching to assist clients, individually or together as a couple, in their soul retrieval work. She believed in living a "life worth dying for."
Jyoti worked with White Wind Weaver and was trained in the Art of Life coaching method. Jyoti’s Tibetan Buddhist teachers of the Dzogchen tradition include Ontil Rimpoche, Lama Kunga and Lama Rangbar all of whom are frequent visitor teachers at Starseed.
Aside from directing Starseed specific yoga programs in multiple locations, Jyoti directed the notable Starseed Yoga Teacher Training Program (SSYTT) (500-hr, 9-month apprenticeship, and the 200-hr versions), and is the inspiration behind the Feminine Wisdom program. In addition, Jyoti founded the Starseed Educational Company, a non-profit branch of Starseed, dedicated to bringing yoga, meditation and healing into sectors of the community afflicted by drug, alcohol addiction and abuse issues for battered women.
Jyoti was a licensed minister performing weddings, christening and naming ceremonies, rites of passages and coming of age ceremonies, funerals and memorial services. Her abilities were recognized by several magazines such as Yoga Journal, Yoga 411, “Yoga Basics” yoga classes on local cable TV, and numerous featured studio awards both locally and nationally over the course of career.
Our beloved JyotiMa will be remembered for her intense passion, love, and laughter of teaching and healing herself and the rest of us with deep love and gratitude.
Dr. Jason Martin, previous co-director of Starseed Yoga