Erika Faith is the founder and director of Cloud Nine Yoga Schools, nationally recognized by The Yoga Alliance at the highest level since 2002.

“I am a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher and Yoga Instructor Trainer (E-R.Y.T. 500) certified by the White Lotus Foundation in 1998. I currently reside in Southern California where I train yoga teachers and students in Riverside, San Diego, L.A. and Orange counties. Along with a huge support network of talented teachers, trainers and fitness/holistic practitioners, I am leading retreats, facilitating classes, conducting workshops and empowering others through the sacred art and practice of Yoga.

I engage my students with playful yoga sequences that potently produce a meditative atmosphere for inquiry and inner awareness. Using specific breathing techniques with internal visualizations and vocal affirmation, practitioners often find themselves releasing deeply. Creating a safe, sacred and supportive space, I guide my classes with radiant poetry and rhythmic music. My goal is to offer a true journey into the heart of being human.

My teaching techniques include using healing touch, partner work, mindful adjustments, aromatherapy and universal spiritual concepts to empower each person to open themselves. There is an ecstatic quality to how I teach; in that, every practitioner is offered choices and the encouragement to tune into their own needs. Poses are used as medicine for the body – as templates to work from – rather than conform to.”

ecstatic (adj): enraptured, elated, in raptures, euphoric, rapturous, joyful, overjoyed, blissful; on cloud nine, in seventh heaven, beside oneself with joy, jumping for joy, delighted, thrilled, exultant; informal: over the moon, on top of the world, blissed out. (Source: Wikipedia)

“Becoming a yoga teacher, for me, happened organically and quickly. Although I hailed from a family with mom and dad practicing yoga, it wasn’t until I met Eleanor Criswell-Hanna at Sonoma State University and began training in Somatic Yoga that it truly became ingrained as an integrated discipline. Since those college years (1995 – 1997), the Psychology of Yoga and the transformational practice of consciousness training has permeated my life.

I have worked with many people; old, young and in-between. Students have come to me with cancer, addiction, mental illness, and other physical traumas. Everyone, generally, just needs to surrender, re-calibrate and expand — to reawaken the body and to reconnect to the soul. When I get to know each of my students individually and learn about their story, we do the deeper work. Each person and body is unique. Our needs vary moment to moment, day by day. I help guide each person to their own healing, courage, wisdom, faith and strength.

My calling is to assist all willing beings who cross my path to come home to one’s uniquely natural place in the world and to lead others to a life of fierce presence, outrageous openness and sweet peace.”

Please check the Special Events Page for current classes with Erika. To get further information, contact her at (310) 989-0878
erika@cloudnineyoga.com

“Erika, I am filled with gratitude for ALL you have provided these 6 months, the space of acceptance, encouragement, love warmth. You’ve helped bring increasing color, light and possibilities to my world.” – Melanie Starr (200/500 Graduate)

“Thank you so much for your inspiration, guidance & love over the past couple years. I am so grateful to have found such a wonderful place to practice my yoga… and such an incredible teacher to learn from. Truly you have found your calling and it shows. I hope someday to help others as much as you have helped me. Thanks for everything!” – Carrie Crum (200/500 Graduate)