Rudy Peirce

In the summer of 1982 he joined the resident staff at Kripalu Center and became certified as a Kripalu Yoga Teacher in 1983. Rudy joined the Kripalu School of Yoga teacher trainer faculty, and has since directed dozens of yoga teacher trainings to hundreds of students over four decades. Today, Rudy’s passion is helping people discover steadiness, ease and new possibilities in their practice of yoga – especially those who may not feel they’re able to. His gift is leading Dynamic Gentle Yoga™, a particularly accessible, yet deep and effective style of yoga he has developed over the years. Rudy leads an empowering, encouraging style of yoga that easily draws students into deep states of stillness and meditation. For years he had been bringing yoga and breath practice to students at Kripalu Center and in studios in the eastern U.S. Along with his wife, Joyce, he was a traveling teacher, taking monthly and sometimes twice-monthly road trips to offer classes, workshops and trainings from Florida to Maine. In March 2020, as the pandemic began, Rudy and Joyce’s on-the-road workshops and local classes cancelled. They thought about how much having a daily breath practice the past year had changed their lives. They had been studying with their friend and colleague, Tom Gillette, and realized that people needed what this practice had to offer – access to grounding and peace – now more than ever. Joyce mused, “Even if we can’t go out and teach, we can offer online classes from our living room.” After very little thought, Rudy and Joyce looked at each other and said “Let’s do it!” Rudy’s intuition told him that a 30 minute breath practice, as a chair-supported practice every morning would be an amazing way to support people as the world changed. Joyce hopped to it and got them up and running on Facebook Live and Zoom. As of July 19, 2024, we have offered the morning Breath Practice 8am - 9:15 (including 1/2 hour of Community Time) every morning for 1584 days, 4 years on! People are welcome to join this class any day or every day or anything in between. In addition to the Breath Practice and occasional Saturday afternoon Immersions, Rudy offers a 75hr online Teacher Training in Chair-Supported Practice for 200hr teachers. See website for more details.