About Us – Yoga Care

About Us

Yoga Care is a traveling yoga studio that meets you where you’re at. We are dedicated to teaching meditation and yoga to as many people as we can by sending compassionate and highly skilled yoga teachers into the community to share the gifts of yoga.

Why Choose Yoga Care?

We are Confident. Yoga Care will provide you with some of the best yoga teachers in the area that are selected based on their ability to teach yoga with compassion and their willingness to cater each class to the individuals in front of them. Our teachers are the best of the best which will make choosing one very easy.

We are Consistent. Holding scheduled yoga classes for you is our priority. If your teacher can’t make it, we will find you a sub for that week. If you or your employees are counting on yoga we will do everything we can to make sure that class happens.

We are Fair Trade. Yoga Care is good for yoga teachers! We strive to bring fair and consistent pay to skilled yoga teachers who deserve to be well compensated for their compassionate teaching skills.

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Carrie Will

Carrie Will is the founder of Yoga Care as well as an instructor. She is a Kripalu trained, certified and registered, yoga teacher who received her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certificate in 2008 and has been teaching proudly ever since. She is well versed and well studied in the Kripalu tradition and has assisted programs and teacher trainings at the Kripalu Center where she gained a wider understanding of yoga philosophy. Carrie is currently on her way to receiving her 500hr advanced teaching certificate. With many hours of study and practice under her belt, Carrie uses her creativity and compassion to build yoga classes on the spot to suit the needs of her students. Her specialty has become teaching yoga to people in recovery. Whether the person in front of her is recovering from addiction or injury or both, Carrie finds great pleasure in tailoring the yoga she teaches to best reach and serve the client she’s working with.

Carrie’s approach to teaching yoga is deeply rooted in empathy and compassion. She believes that yoga satisfies a core human need to be seen and she teaches people how to see and accept themselves for who they are. She has spent the last several years researching, studying and offering trauma informed yoga classes.

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Celena Matsen

Celena loves using yoga asana to compassionately practice mindfulness, and the skills of noticing body, thinking, and breath. Her approach is eclectic and down to earth.

She is an LCSW, has been practicing yoga for 25 years, and received RYT 200 in 2007 at Atmananda Yoga Center in NYC. She has a wide range of experience in yoga and movement.

In the Capital District she has taught Chair, Gentle, and Vinyassa yoga classes at the YMCA, JCC, and Elevate 518 Studio.

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Merdina Hayduke

Merdina is a registered yoga teacher (RYT) in the Capital Region. She started getting serious about her yoga practice once she noticed the benefits it brought to all aspects of her life. This eventually led to her attending Jai Yoga School’s Yoga Teacher Training in 2020. Yes, “THE” 2020. The one with the toilet paper shortage!

Merdina believes that, through yoga, we come home to ourselves and learn to love, accept, and take care of ourselves unconditionally. Her classes are mindfully designed to allow students to simply meet themselves on the mat, just as they are, and make yoga accessible to all bodies. Expect to move through simple sequences with detailed instruction and gentle, restorative postures with plenty of opportunities to ground and tune into the breath. Perfect for the beginner or intermediate yogi looking to deepen their yoga practice.

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Meghan Hogan

Meghan is an experienced registered yoga teacher based in the New York State Capital Region. She received her 200-hour yoga teacher certification from Lauren Toolin in 2011 and has since completed an additional 300+ hours of formal study, with an ongoing focus in the area of yoga therapeutics. She has had the unique opportunity to serve as Teaching Assistant for Yoga Vidya’s 200-hour teacher training program since 2014. Ten years of experience in the field of Speech-Language Pathology contribute to Meghan’s capacity to see each of her students holistically and respond to their unique presentation within a group setting.

Meghan’s students are empowered through practice and compassionate individualized guidance to access and use the tools they innately possess to manage stress and chronic pain, breathe fully, rest deeply, and develop habits that support a joyful experience of Self. Meghan identifies living an inspired life grounded in personal practice as a potent teaching modality.

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Katie Tobin Thornton

Katie Thornton’s first visit to a yoga studio was nearly 20 years ago in a walk-up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a first-year middle school teacher, she found great relief and comfort in the ancient practice of yoga and has not put her mat away since. Trying out many different styles, she finally landed at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in 2008 for a month-long teacher training. Since then, she has taught Kripalu Yoga, a classic Hatha style, from the city streets of Washington DC to rural New Hampshire to school teachers in East Greenbush. Katie strives to “live her yoga” in all aspects of her life including the work and practice of parenting her three daughters.