Roni Brissette discovered yoga after participating in Dr. Herbert Benson's very first Mind Body Clinic at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. She then began studying Iyengar yoga with Carol Nelson in the early 1980's. After a series of corporate jobs, she finally pursued her passion--teaching yoga.
She opened The Yoga Studio in Winston-Salem, NC in 1993. She was a pioneer in introducing yoga to the corporate arena -- Sara Lee Corporation, Wake Forest University, Wachovia Bank, and Forsyth Memorial Hospital. In 1996, she founded Yoga to Go in Boston, providing yoga instruction to individuals, groups, and corporations.
Shortly after her arrival, back to the Boston area, the Boston Center for Adult Education featured her as "Best New Teacher". She has taught yoga seminars and classes for Whole Food Markets, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates and Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo Law Firm. Youth Yoga is a program serving 7-18 year old students that she introduced into the Brookline Public School System. In 1998, she opened her own Brookline studio.
Now at 53, she holds a Junior Intermediate Level II Iyengar Teacher certification from IYNAUS. She is also a certified yoga instructor with the International Yoga Teachers' Association (I.Y.T.A.). In addition she has completed the 500-hour level standard for Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT).
She appears in Patricia Walden's yoga DVDs and Walden's "The Women's Book of Yoga". Brissette was named "Best Yoga Teacher" by Boston Magazine's Best of Boston ® 1999. She has served as a yoga consultant to national health publications. She appears in the book "Yoga for Depression" by Timothy McCall MD. She was part of the faculty of the Iyengar Yoga Teacher training program in Boston and continues to train students for Iyengar certication. Roni continues her studies with primary teachers, Patricia Walden and Joan White. Outside of her yoga interests she enjoys design, architecture, and film. She currently resides in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband, Stephen and teenage son, Jackson.