Brentwood Yoga Center

Sandy Carmellini is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She is also a certified Yoga Therapist (c-IAYT), a Craniosacral Therapist, E-RYT500  (Yoga Alliance), Reiki II and aromatherapy practitioner. 

She was a devoted student and assistant to Donald Moyer until he retired. Sandy has studied with Sri HS Arun since 2009 and has traveled to India several times to deepen her devotion to yoga under his guidance. She has spent time in Pune studying with the Iyengar family. Her current teachers in the U.S. are Heather Haxo Phillips and Michael Lucey.

When she’s not on the mat, Sandy loves spending time with her family, hiking with her husband, cooking and eating vegan food, playing with her cats and studying essential oils. She firmly believes that a healthy lifestyle, including yoga and connection to community brings balance to the body, mind, and spirit.

You might recognize Sandy, as she is the yoga model in the popular book written by Nina Zolotow and Baxter Bell, “Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being”



Iyengar Yoga is the worlds most widely practiced method of yoga created and  taught by Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar.  

He made yoga accessible and relevant to people everywhere, no matter what their physical or mental ability.  

The system of teaching is methodical and progressive, emphasizing detailed correctness and absolute safety.

He was the author of the classic book, "Light on Yoga."

His school is still based in Pune, India where his son Prashant and grand daughter teach Abhijata teach as well as many other great teachers.

The Iyengar method systematically evolves precise postures and breathing techniques with a firm basis in Yogic philosophy.  When necessary, students use props to progress safely and advanced students use props to challenge complex poses.

Beginners work with simple postures according to their capacity.  As a student develops they move on to more challenging practices and complex postures.  

Yoga is for everyone. No one is too old or too stiff, too fat or thin or tired. A Certified Iyengar Yoga teacher can guide students of all ages and physical conditions to an experience of yoga, which is safe, accessible and rewarding.

Certified Iyengar Yoga instructors are held to an unusually rigorous standard. Only after years of training and evaluation do they become certified to teach in the method of B.K.S. Iyengar.  

"The signs of progress on the path of Yoga are health, a sense of physical lightness, steadiness, clearness of countenance, a beautiful voice, sweetness of odour of the body and freedom from craving.  The yogi has a balanced, serene, tranquil mind.  A yogi is the very symbol of humility.  He/She dedicates all actions to a higher source and takes refuge in it.  This frees the yogi from the bondage of karma (action) and moves him/her to Jivana Mukta (a Liberated Soul)"

Light On Yoga

B.K.S. Iyengar