Ashtanga Yoga, Pranayama, Meditation

Lance Cockings is the founder and owner of Charlotte Ashtanga Yoga. He decided to open the studio after practicing Ashtanga yoga for more than 10 years, and pranayama and meditation for 5 years. He has now being practicing yoga for more than 20 years.

Lance was originally introduced to yoga by his mother, a self taught yogi. His initial path though was 7 years of martial arts study including Tae Kwon Do, Kenpo, Wu Mei and Qigong. It was his study of Wu Mei and Qigong’s energy movement and recollections of his mother’s yoga practice that led Lance to his first yoga class in 2001.

Ashtanga student

Lance believes he will always be a student of yoga. Since 2005, Lance has been a student of certified senior Ashtanga instructor Tim Miller, having completed the primary series, intermediate series and pranayama sequence. Lance has completed Ashtanga workshops and Mysore classes with, among other senior teachers, Richard Freeman, David Garrigues, Kino MacGregor and David Keil.

While living in the UK, Lance advanced his Pranayama in a 6 month training under a student of Swami Gitananda. He also studied Tibetan meditation directly with John Churchill for 5 years. Lance subsequently practiced advanced pranayama and chakra kundalini yogic meditation. Over the past few years, Lance has being studying the classical and medieval yoga texts .

Ashtanga teacher

Lance has learned that a dedicated practice brings many unexpected benefits. Lance teaches part time as he has a full time job in the IT industry. He has learned how much yoga has benefited his work and personal life. His primary goal for teaching is to share his passion, knowledge and learning of the Ashtanga yoga practice as well as pranayama and meditation. He has found that students learn and progress the best in small class sizes. With the individual attention on a weekly basis, students can take the learnings to their own personal practice. Lance’s teaching is a direct result of his own challenges with the practices, workshops with certified Ashtanga instructors, very established pranayama and meditation instructors and working with students.