Our Story
The story of Nosara Yoga Institute unfolds from a 40-year-old love affair with yoga in which Don and Amba have been engaged in the study, practice and teaching what they love most in life—Yoga. From the depths of their own personal inquiries into how we learn to learn from our own, authentic experiences in life, Don and Amba Stapleton have been inventing and refining ways that stimulate self-development and creative fulfillment. Twenty years ago, they began to combine their efforts into founding Nosara Yoga Institute as a place to guide others in discovering their own way of practicing and teaching yoga with skillfulness and satisfaction.
Before founding the Nosara Yoga Institute in 1994 with Amba, Don was the CEO and Dean of Yoga Education at the largest residential yoga center in the United States. As yoga students, both Don and Amba lived an ashram lifestyle for many years—Don for 20 years, and Amba for 7. From their own immersion in Hatha Yoga practices, and lifelong dedication to the service of teaching, Don and Amba provide a depth of knowledge drawn from personal experience.
A Personal Welcome from Don and Amba Stapleton, Founders of Nosara Yoga Institute
As lifelong learners ourselves, we treasure the opportunity to share this time in your life as you discover new levels of depth in your own yoga practice, as you nurture relationships with other yoga enthusiasts, practitioners and teachers, and as you take a fresh look into the inner world of the friends, family members, students and clients you are preparing to serve.
What’s unique about the way we prepare yoga educators is the emphasis we place on generating an experiential learning environment in a way that invites relaxed learning. We place the highest value on establishing authentic relationships that encourage every individual to look to inner wisdom for the ultimate authority. We approach the experience of yoga as an inquiry into one’s own experience. Until we develop a yoga muscle that allows us to witness our life experience with non-judgmental self-awareness, we’re not that efficient at learning from our own experience. This is where the yoga inquiry begins.
We describe our approach to yoga as being “interdisciplinary”—meaning that we explore what is common to the diverse disciplines of yoga being taught and practiced in the world today. We delve into the depth and breadth of fundamental practices and philosophies of yoga that emphasize the importance of wisdom that comes from the inside out. Yoga teachers whose lives are transformed from the inside out are capable of transmitting enthusiasm for the learning process. Our shared mission is to awaken awareness of the power we have as yoga educators to invent new ways of being together as human beings. Learning together in a yoga class invites a depth of relationship that supports a depth of personal inquiry. Every aspect of each 200-, 500- and 1000-hr professional training program is designed as an inquiry into your own yoga—What’s your yoga?
When you study with us, we trust that you will find a stimulating environment to help you deepen your own relationship to life through exploring the yoga you are born to live, practice and share with the world around you.
With great joy in sharing the yoga journey, we welcome you to Nosara Yoga Institute.
– Amba and Don