Jill Gamer is the kind of person who—at the drop of a hat—will get onto the floor to show you a cool new yoga posture she’s working on. (The last time I witnessed this, she literally wound up with her feet resting comfortably atop her head while she chatted about why she liked the pose.) It’s this spontaneity and passion for her job that makes practicing in her classes so much fun.
I recently dropped into one of Jill’s popular Yoga Music Flow classes as a way to wrap up a long and busy weekend. Jill had put together a killer mix of love songs (“Nothing cheesy!”) as a way to kick off Valentine’s Day, and as soon as I heard the opening beats of XX’s song "VCR," I knew this class would be just what the proverbial doctor ordered.
Jill took the Valentine’s Day theme to a new level as she focused the class on heart openers (ha! get it?) and integrated chest expansion into poses throughout the practice. Pounding her chest ala Marky Mark in the movie Fear, Jill had us in stitches as she cleverly reminded us to puff up our chests as we dropped back into camel. The class was accessible, yet challenging, and Jill’s cueing was clear and relatable. And, despite a misguided attempt at a backwards somersault on my part, I left the class with an enormous smile on my face.
Jill is a relatively new teacher, but you’d never know it. After finishing her teacher training in California, she enrolled in Yogaview’s no-nonsense 500 hour certification program. Her enthusiasm for learning about yoga keeps her classes fresh and exciting and ensures that she never teaches the same class twice.
If you want to catch one of Jill’s classes, and I highly recommend that you do so, check out her website. And if you don’t believe the story I opened this post with, just take a peek at this photo.
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