Meet Crys Rivers:
“If people can exist in the world feeling more comfortable in their own skins – happy, at peace, and physically strong – then surely they have more energy to make a positive impact on the external world.”
Crystal Rivers, JD, E-RYT ("Crys") finds great joy in empowering her students to be their own best teachers. She encourages her students to stay mentally and physically flexible, taking the best of yoga beyond the mat and into their lives. Her wish for her students is that they discover their inner confidence and wisdom, while not sacrificing their humor and playfulness.
Crys integrates the benefits of yoga postures, breath practices, mindfulness techniques and psychotherapeutic protocols in her work with yoga students. She teaches yoga to the general community in weekly classes at Blue Point Yoga in Durham, NC and at Triangle Pilates and Cary Yoga Center in Cary, NC. She has also taught workshops and classes internationally, including retreat centers in India and Spain. Separately, Crys offers yoga to clients with chronic, complex psychological trauma as an adjunct to their work with psychotherapists. She also teaches yoga to both therapists and caregivers.
With well over 1,000 teaching hours, Crys has been designated by Yoga Alliance as an Experienced 200-hour Registered Teacher, or E-RYT 200. She received her yoga teacher training in 2003 from Stephanie Keach, director of Asheville Yoga Center.
Crys has received considerable training on how to use yoga as a complementary treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through the yoga certificate program provided by Dave Emerson, E-RYT and Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. at the Trauma Center, nonprofit medical division of the Justice Resource Institute in Boston, MA. She has also received training from Amy Weintraub, MFA, E-RYT in the practice of LifeForce Yoga for Depression and from Rev. Frank Jude Boccio, D.Ay., RYT, MSC in Mindfulness Yoga. Recently, she has trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) through the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine with Jeffrey Brantley, M.D. and Ron Vereen, M.D. The Duke program is modeled on the MBSR program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, M.D. at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
Crys has a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is frequently teased for being one of the many "recovering lawyers" in the yoga field, though she actually went the business rather than law route. Crys is also an accomplished silversmith whose jewelry designs are inspired by yoga’s influence on her life. She sells her designs under the label of - what else would it be? - Groovy Yogi.
Perhaps the best way to meet Crys and her work is to visit the Community Experiences page.
From left to right: (1) with SuperDuck (silly travel companion) in Barcelona; (2) studio photo by Steve Clarke; (3) Poopo Mine ruins outside Oruro, Bolivia
“. . . you have such a clear and thoughtful way of leading us through but you make it a whole person experience, engaging our spirits as well as our bodies. And you find room for the humor and humanity of it all . . . ” – J.B., Durham, NC