Angela Jamison

Ashtanga Teacher

Angela is a certified teacher who directs Ashtanga Yoga Ann Arbor. This shala which has been open daily without a break since 2010.

She left an academic career to open the shala. Her background in historical research, economic sociology and immigrant rights advocacy has shaped her teaching. Most importantly, those fields of study offer great ideas to sustain a strong and diverse yoga community in a small Midwestern town.

She has written an online diary at insideowl.com since 2007. It's on substack too.

Angela first found ashtanga in 2000 in Seattle, and became very focused on the practice after a near-fatal car accident in 2002. He mentor, since 2006, is Dominic Corigliano. She met Sharath Jois in 2002 and began intensive study with him in 2009. In addition to asana stuff, she has been doing serious sitting practice for about 20 years. Her meditation teacher Shinzen Young has always taught in a way concordant with the Yoga Sutras. Her primary interest in all of this is the physical body. She is fascinated by physical practice as a doorway to deep feeling and concentration, and considers all embodied practice as potentially sacred. Practice is not about learning to execute techniques or looking a certain way; it is about opening up personal degrees of freedom through the body.

Angela grew up on a sort of ranch in rural Montana. There was a lot of time in the Beartooth Mountains, and a lot of outdoor work. This simplicity initially drove her to a cosmopolitan, intellectual life. But in 2020 she moved to the woods outside Ann Arbor. An intimate relationship with nature has really changed everything, in all good ways.