YJB / Jess Bertin hosts live yoga and yoga-adjacent experiences, in-person and online, and guides physical, mental, and philosophical practices from classical yoga in order to cultivate inner peace and outer harmony. Bertin completed 500+ hours of training with Integral Yoga, became a teacher trainer, and also experienced 10+ years of hospitality, management, quality control, and training baristas with Joe Coffee Company in New York City. YJB is now a directing member and teacher-practitioner with Eka Jyothi Yoga Collective, supervises the Shenandoah Conservatory Box Office, and hosts the Well-Being Concert series.

Knowing it’s all connected, YJB thinks in systems for a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. They support autonomy and agency through education and options, and see yoga practices not as escape from the struggles of life, but as pathways for navigating the world and knowing thyself.

Born in a middle-class New Jersey suburb in the 1980s, some additional influences upon Bertin include Wellesley College, major depressive disorder, Star Wars, Spiro Collective Ayurveda, ashram living, the Tejal Yoga Activist Sanctuary, Tristan Katz’s Conscious Marketing, and a month in the desert. YJB can sometimes be found cooking hearty vegetarian meals, twisting wild woody vines into wreaths, and upside-down.