Julia Nugent

Background:

Jules is a Community Builder, Meditation Teacher, and student of life. She believes in the power of bringing like minds together to support each others personal growth.  After graduating college Jules began a career in Food Editorial, learning the in's and out's of the restaurant world in Los Angeles. Jules scoured the city getting the inside scoop on the best new restaurant openings, and innovative Chef's on the map. Her love for food and storytelling led her to dive deeper into the benefits of ingredients, how they are sourced, and the impact food can have on the body. The power of food as a universal language led her on a spiritual journey to learn about the Mind + Body connection. Jules is fascinated by the impact our environment has on the body, as well as how our inner world can affect our outer world. She began studying Eastern Traditions of Meditation, Ayurveda, and Yoga to learn how to live more in harmony with the environment. 

Jules believes in bringing people together through the senses, and incorporating Mindfulness to live a richer life. She teaches adults and children how to apply these practices in their everyday life, through meditation, nourishment, and movement. 

Jules is a Certified Meditation Teacher and Thought Coach, she has a B.A. in Communication & Journalism from USC. She currently works one on one and with groups educating about  Mindful Eating + Meditation, creates Meditations for Children, and  works closely with an Urban Farm!

Jules was born and raised in Los Angeles, where she lives currently.

Why I practice meditation:

Meditation allows me to come back to self, and take inventory of what I am working with so I can navigate the world accordingly. We often get pulled out into the busy day to day, and my meditation practice has become a tool to keep me focused and on purpose. 

Why I teach meditation:

 I teach meditation as a way to share my practice and this powerful tool that has changed my life with others. It is a beautiful way to hold space for others to find a moment of peace and stillness. 

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Shayna Hiller

Background:

Shayna Hiller is a 500-hr E-RYT yoga & meditation teacher, YACEP and Certified Health Coach based in Venice Beach, CA. She is also a business coach for yoga teachers. Her light-hearted and deeply intuitive approach to teaching and coaching is truly one of a kind.

Shayna has been teaching yoga and leading yoga and meditation retreats around the world for over a decade.

She is a Yoga Alliance Certified Yoga Teacher, Pranassage Practitioner, Children’s Yoga Teacher and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. Alas, life has been (and still is) the greatest teacher of all…

Shayna is originally from New Jersey, but lived and learned in the jungles of Costa Rica for five years of her early adult life. This is where she experienced her most significant healing and personal transformation.

It is both Shayna’s passion and privilege to share her wisdom and methods to empower people of their inherent capacity to bring their deepest desires to life.

Why I practice meditation:

I practice meditation to gain the clarity, creativity and inspiration that I use to guide me in my personal and professional life. 

Why I teach meditation:

I teach meditation in order to share the tremendous value and positive impact this practice offers. Meditation has the capacity to re-wire the way we relate with ourselves and the world and can open doors of opportunity, ease and magic. I believe we each embody an inner stillness that is accessible at all times. 

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Natalie Valle

Background:

My background includes Sound Healing training through Soundology, as well as Yoga Instructor (RYT 200 in-progress), and meditation. Since I was very young, I knew I had a deep connection to spirit, but it wasn’t until I was older that I discovered my true roots and all of my ancestor spirit guides who provide me with guidance and wisdom.

Why I practice meditation:

I’ve battled the darkness that stems from the human condition, and through yoga and meditation have found my way back to the light. My own life experience taught me the beauty and art of loving yourself, how to heal from negative patterns, and truly manifest the life of your dreams.

Why I teach meditation:

I feel called to offer people a healing experience that will help them transmute any negative patterns that are holding them back from feeling light, aligned, and empowered. Using sound and meditation, along with other modalities that have helped me along my own journey, I help people create an experience that fits their unique needs and styles.

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Alex Joy Pucci

Background:

Alex Joy is a meditation teacher with over 8 years in the wellness and fitness industries. Alex Joy is an actress, and graduated for Columbia University with her MFA in Acting,. While she studied acting, she found another passion while developing her "side hustle"; as someone who was always committed to health and food, she received her Holistic Health Coaching certification through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and picked up a volunteer job coordinated events at The Open Center - NYC's biggest holistic learning center. While she was there she took classes in Chinese Medicine, Aryuveda and mediation. After a meditation retreat with Kripalu's founding member Thomas Amelio, she was hooked. She continued health coaching and later took to teaching indoor cycling all over NYC and later Asia, as she felt that pushing limits in one's body is its own kind of mindfulness training. Finally, after years of a personal practice, she decided to take her studies to the next level and enrolled in the Interdependence Project's Meditation Teacher Training and simultaneously received her Reiki certification and taught at lululemon athletica's HUB seventeen community space. Alex Joy can now be found teaching at spin at Flywheel in NYC, meditation to private clients, corporate clients through Journey Meditation, and is now thrilled to now be working with Unplug as part of their NYC team.

Why I practice meditation:

Why not?! Just kidding. My practice had help me find a deep level of compassion, has made me better able to regulate my emotions and stress, allowed me to see the beauty of impermanence in all things, and has helped me realise that true happiness and peace isn't reliant on anything external - everything we need we have, in each new moment, with each new breath. What greater gift is there?

Why I teach meditation:

I want to share the fruits of this practice with the world. It really needs it right now.

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Elena Safavi

Background:

Elena began her meditation journey at age 5, trained by her team of U.S. National figure skating coaches to visualize and find stillness to maximize performance. Living, training, and playing around the world, she has worked with mindful artists such as Dai Zaobab, Fawnia Dietrich, and Sofia Thom, gaining experience teaching mindful body movement. After completing undergraduate studies in Buddhism and Traditional Chinese Medicine at UC Berkeley, Elena expanded her area of experience, training under Debra Silverman as a certified astrologer, completing the Unplug 200-hour Meditation Teacher Training, and working with renowned sound healer, Andrew Clark. Elena’s mission is to bring a gentle, safe, and simple approach to a variety of intertwining and complex physical and energetic bodily systems that work together to bring out the highest version of each individual.

Why I practice meditation:

I practice meditation because it allows me to show up as my best version for those around me, as well as for myself. I feel calmer, happier, and am able to find more clarity in my thoughts and ease in my articulation.

Why I teach meditation:

I teach meditation because I wholeheartedly believe in these tools as necessities in a modern, digital society. The diagnosis numbers of depression and anxiety are rapidly increasing, as our society moves faster, grander, and more disconnected. Meditation has the ability to profoundly shift the world to a place of calmer peace, forming a community of happy, inspired, and empathetic individuals.

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Eric Ajna

Background:

Eric Ajna began his journey in 2007 after a near death experience that brought him into a deeper understanding of the nature of the mind and spirit, which dramatically altered the trajectory of his life as an LA based ambient music producer. Eric turned to clinical Hospice work and end of life care as a way to deliver higher spiritual counseling to terminally ill patients in their final days. He integrated various eastern wisdom teachings with alternative healing modalities as a way to alter the relationship patients have to the dying process. Sound and vibration played such an integral role in his own death that it inspired him to study the therapeutic effects of vibration on the mind and body. Eric uses a mixture of acoustic and electronic instruments along with his own voice to bring a more subtle, soothing and meditative quality into the lives of many.

Eric received his mastery in Reiki with the International Center for Reiki Healing and a secondary certification in Integrative Shamanic and Shakti Reiki as taught by Andrea Stark of The Tree of Life Healing Center in Pasadena. He holds residency at several yoga studios across the Southern California region and has also performed at festivals like Lucidity.

Why I practice meditation:

I've spent a number of years meditating on the mystical experience, becoming more intimately connected with the subtle awareness which communicates a language and sense of beauty more pure and sacred than anything I can put into words. Our direct source of communication with our highest most authentic selves will be in this space between silence and thought. By creating space in the mind, we are given the keys to understanding the basic fundamentals of our role as contributors in this world, which is to be loving, peaceful and compassionate to all that occupy our space with us. As one re enters the meditative state, a deeper understanding of reality unfolds and we begin to understand meditation not as a destination, but as the truest form of our own being-ness.

Why I teach meditation:

By re entering the meditative state, a deeper sense of truth naturally unfolds in the consciousness of each individual. It is a truth that dispels any curriculum of study into the quality of meditation as a teaching. We begin to understand that meditation cannot be taught but only understood through simple recognition of what is. If it is to be called anything, it could be looked at as an un-teaching. It is a subtraction. By unraveling the layers of thought we quickly begin to realize meditation as the most natural state, which has not arrived, though has always been present in us. When one is meditating, one is alive, present and profoundly human. It is our own illusion that prevents us from such a simple recognition that we are already there. We are meditation.

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Philipp Schardt

Background:

Gold- and Platinum Award Winning Music Producer & Sound Healer. Initiated and Prof. Certified Healer and Teacher within the Lineage of King Salomon.

Why I practice meditation:

I practice meditation to be of the highest Service to myself and others. Only a still mind can receive higher messages and alignment that is needed to bring more Peace and Healing to our World. Meditation holds the key to be the truest and most authentic self you can be.

Why I teach meditation:

We all are here to share our Passion. My Passion is to uplift others in everything I do - be it through Music, Healings or Teaching Metaphysics and Meditation. Meditation holds the key to empty and quiet the mind & release Stress so more of our innate Truth can flow through us. When we then apply this truth in our Lives we can create a circle and uplift others.

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Gwen Gaydos

Background:

Gwendolyn, Transformational Coach & Spiritual Healer, began her journey over two decades ago as a traditional Pharmacist. Her mission is to help you holistically heal in body, mind, and spirit, transform to your highest potential, and expand futher than you could ever imagine.

Gwendolyn loves healing with Vibrational Medicine, Reiki, Essential Oils, Crystal therapy, Yoga, and Meditation. Gwen also enjoys teaching others Reiki and guiding others to Soul Expansion- connecting privately, through her signature programs, and live classes and events.

Why I practice meditation:

I believe the ultimate expression of self love is to give ourselves time and space just to "be". I practice meditation because it allows me the time and space to do this, deeply relax my mind, and connect to my true self and intuition completely. I have found it helps with anxiety, stress, depression, focus and most immediately helps to calm my very busy mind!

Why I teach meditation:

I want to share this beautiful tool and teach others so they can eliminate anxiety and calm the mind chatter to connect with their truest selves, which I believe is the key to living an authentic, passionate, purposeful life! I love teaching in a classroom setting because, from my own experience, it has given me the time, space and permission to practice meditation for a longer period of time than I normally would give myself at home! It has helped me to drop in more deeply, and feel super blissed out the whole day. It has changed my life, and I want this for you!

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Unplug Meditation

12401 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 101 Los Angeles, CA 90025

(310) 826-8899

info@unplug.com