It was in Belgrade, Serbia, Gordanas home country, where she took her first yoga class. It was 1996 when she went to a dance studio to take yoga class wondering what yoga was. The book inspired her to search for the meaning of the word yoga and, her curiosity led to a three-year journey of Hatha Yoga. After this sequence of her life, she lost practice and for many years she had no thoughts of yoga. One day the circumstances of her life led her to move to the US. Desire for yoga was awakening again and, Moksha Yoga Center became her home. She practiced with different teachers there and, one of them, Jim Bennitt inspired her to continue deeper exploration of yoga through Teacher Training. In 2010, she completed Teacher Training program under the guidance of Daren Friesen. After taking workshops with master teachers like Tias Little, Aadil Palkivala, Rod Stryker, she was led to Ashtanga practice Mysore style one morning. In the silence of self-practice and Todds patient guidance, Gordana found her true practice. Daily practice was teaching her how to synchronize mind and body, overcome habits, relax within discipline, learn how to be open and fearless and find sacredness in everyday life. She discovered something that was always available, inexhaustible and impossible to posses.
In 2011 meeting Richard Freeman and reading his book The Morror of Yoga was the reaffirming moment when she decided to work towards teaching Ashtanga practice.
Gordana has been teaching since 2010 and, she feels she is just beginning. She has practiced Ashtanga for three years and, in 2013 she traveled to Thailand, India and Nepal drawn to search for the roots of yoga, meditation and Buddhism. She spent 7 weeks practicing with R. Sharath Jois in Mysore India, which helped her to reach a deeper integration of the practice. In Nepal she studied Tibetan Buddhist Meditation and Buddhist philosophy.
Gordana continues her daily practice with Todd Boman who teaches her courage, dedication, discipline and trust every day with his own example. As a teacher she aspires to inspire and guide students to go deeper within and search for more balance and depth in both yoga and life. She is interested in reaching harmony in body and enabling energy to flow freely through all channels, joints, muscles and organs. She is interested in reaching levels of oneself that otherwise one could never reach and feel who/what we are instead of who/what we think we should be. With practice, Gordana challenges both herself and her students to rethink what asana is about and potentially work on marrying asana and meditation to reach a deeper practice where it could be possible to meet stillness in movement and experience flow in stillness.

PaintedYoga™. The idea of combining yoga and painting first came one summer, while I was watching my boys paint with their fingers on huge blank watercolor papers. As toddlers, they had fun stepping all over the painted papers – a pure expression of their creativity. In my heart, I know it’s now time to bring the idea to life and share this wonderful experience to rest of the world.

Merging my passions for both art and yoga, I started Painted Yoga™ to inspire creativity and encourage others to express and rediscover themselves through art and the practice of yoga. One of a kind canvas paintings are created using the body and the practice of yoga as art media.

I have been practicing yoga for eight years and also a martial artist. After getting injured in Tae kwon do, yoga helped me to recover emotionally and physically. I then decided to become a yoga teacher to share the healing and physical benefits of yoga to others. My classes are a lively mix of balance, strength and flexibility, focusing on alignment and breathing.

Thank you. Remember, there’s always an artist inside of us. Art and Yoga don’t have to be perfect, that’s why it’s called a ‘practice’.

Namaste ॐ,

Sherie Sloane
Founder and Creator