Healing Arts Yoga
at LHAA

Our skilled yoga instructors have years of experience in their practice and teaching, emphasizing safe, intelligent and intentional healing movement through yoga. Beyond their passion for yoga, our instructors are always willing to help people whether they are beginners or experienced practitioners.

Connie Payne, RYT 500

Connie has been teaching yoga classes since 2013. Her classes ranged from all levels, intermediate levels, yoga with weights, yoga for strength/flexibility and yoga for the pelvic floor. She has assisted the LHAA Yoga Teacher Training program since 2018. Connie has been a firm believer in the therapeutic benefits of yoga since the 90’s when she was seeking relief from chronic back and hip pain. She found that yoga helped strengthen and heal her body, and it offered a calming, centering experience. Connie completed her 200 RYT at Lexington Healing Arts and her 300 RYT in Rishikesh, India.

Beth Connors-Manke, E-RYT 200

Beth has been practicing yoga since 2000 and graduated from LHAA’s first 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2009. An Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT) with Yoga Alliance, Beth began teaching studio classes in January 2010 and has taught continuously since then. Beth’s teaching specialties include back health, the subtle body, yoga philosophy, ethics, and Ayurveda.

Beth joined the LHAA teaching team for the yoga teacher training in 2017, taking on the role of co-lead trainer. Since that time, Beth has helped update the curriculum to make it more integrated and learner-focused. During the Covid pandemic, she was responsible for adapting the curriculum when the program had to shift temporarily to instruction over Zoom.

Beth’s pedagogical experience extends beyond the studio. She has a doctorate in English and has taught college-level writing, rhetoric, public speaking, and literature since 2001. In that capacity, she has trained and mentored new teachers for more than 15 years.

Ashley Shochat

Ashley Shochat is from Lexington and graduated from UK with a BFA in painting. She moved to Brooklyn in 1995 and started practicing yoga regularly in NYC with Sharon Gannon at Jivamukti. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in 99, she practiced at Rodney Yee’s studio until discovering Bikram yoga in 2002, which she trained for five years while raising her 3 kids and hiking, mountain biking, snowboarding and rock climbing around California. Then in 2007 she attended the first Bikram teacher training to be held outside of Los Angeles in Honolulu, Hawaii. Since then Ashley has taught throughout the Bay Area and other locations, including her studio Black Lotus Yoga in Lexington, which closed in March 2020.