Maggie Bukowski (RPP, M.ED.)  Maggie is a Registered Polarity Practitioner (RPP) and Manual Lymph Drainage Therapist. She has been in the healing arts since 1999. Before that, she spent 20 years as a special educator working with students of all age levels and various disabilities. She considers her yoga classes and bodywork sessions an honor to give and often combines both modalities to provide a relaxed, safe experience for her clients/students. Maggie is a strong believer in the goodness of people and their ability to create peace and healing for themselves and the world, within the practical framework of everyday life.

 Marty Gegner (Certified Dream Group Leader).  Marty provides Dream Analysis services at the Studio, including leadership of the Studio's ongoing Dream Interpretation Groups and private Dream Interpretation sessions.  Marty became interested in dreams at the age of 18 when she had a dream that saved her life, and has been actively recording and studying dreams for more than 20 years.  She currently leads Dream Groups at Haven of Northern Virginia (a grief support center) for both the volunteers and the bereaved.  She is a member of the Association for the Study of Dreams, and has been a participating member of an active dream group of Dream Yoga Studio for the past eight years.  She is a graduate of a two-year program at the Haden Institute for the Study of Dreams, earning her certification in Dream Group Leadership. The Institute and Marty apply a Jungian perspective towards dream interpretation, analysis and dream group leadership. 

Marty is also an Intuitive Card Reader.  She comes from a family of intuitives that acknowledge inner "knowing" as the highest source of personal power.  She feels that helping you navigate your unconscious, whether it is with dreams or with a tool such as the Tarot cards, is a way of helping you choose your own path rather than having the path choose you.  It allows your innermost being to be heard. 

Working backstage as a professional makeup artist in television, theatre and publications such as People and Cosmopolitan magazines, offered Marty the opportunity to quietly observe and gain insight into human nature and behavior in "real life" situations.  That experience, she says,  “has been invaluable in my dream work, proving time and again that, although we are all different, we really are the same. We have the same hopes, dreams and fears."  Marty also owned her own retail/wholesale women's clothing design business, and was costume and make-up design consultant for several large choruses of “Sweet Adelines International.”  She knows that honoring your dreams releases the creativity within. Quite often, ideas for her designs and work would appear in dreams.

As a nature lover, Marty attended Marine Biology courses at the University of California, Irvine for her own enjoyment and holds a black belt in Kenpo Kung Fu Karate, a soft style, defense only, Chinese martial art.  The "Katas" or dances in Kenpo Kung Fu are reminiscent of Tai Chi.

Marty's goal as a dream worker is to help you realize dreams come in the interest of your health and wholeness and are the means of self and soul discovery. “The only time the Universe has our undivided attention is when we are asleep,” she says. "It is never just a dream."

Caroline Hesse (500-Hour BYT).  After many years of traditional exercise and athletics, and several years of daily intensive karate practice, Caroline’s back had reached its limit.  Per her mother’s suggestion, after much resistance, she gave Bikram yoga a try.  The heat and athletic nature of the Bikram class was addictive and eventually led her to take the intensive, two-month long, 500-hour Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in Los Angeles in Fall 2001.  With a renewed back, she set out to teach Bikram, but quickly grew out of the practice after several years. 

The next evolution in Caroline’s yoga journey began in 2002 when she met Amrit Desai, prominent student of Swami Kripalu and founder of Kripalu Yoga Center.  After taking an Amrit-style class, Caroline realized that she had been very much out of touch with her body, even with a regular Bikram practice.  This class and its unique meditative and intention-based approach was a true awakening!  Caroline further studied with Yogi Desai in 2003 participating in a Yoga Nidra (literally “yogic sleep”) meditation intensive at his ashram in Florida.  This added yet another layer of dimension to her yoga practice.  Upon returning from the intensive, she was frustrated to find no Amrit teachers in the D.C. area.  After practicing solo for a while, she was serendipitously introduced to Luann’s Kriplau classes at Dream Yoga Studio in 2004!   She continued her yoga practice at DYS through pregnancy and after the birth of her daughter in July 2006.  Caroline’s love affair with music and yogic chant led her to study with kirtan master Jai Uttal at Kripalu in 2005.  She is also an avid self-study student of nutrition, wellness and healing arts.

Caroline is currently in the midst of working on her 200-hour Yoga Alliance certification and is planning to do a Yoga Nidra teacher training in the near future.  She is excited about sharing yoga and life’s journey with the DYS family.

Katherine 'Kat' Katz  (KYT-500 & RYT-500). Kat began her yoga practice as a student of Dream Yoga Studio. Her love of yoga led her to seek basic and advanced yoga teacher training. She is a Professional Level Kripalu Yoga teacher and is a Registered Yoga Teacher with the National Yoga Alliance. Kat is also completing her second 500-hour teacher training in Pranakriya Yoga with Yoganand Michael Carroll.   Kat has taught gentle to vigorous yoga since 2004 to students of all age, experience and ability levels, including teens. Teens enjoy her instruction because she’s young and is playful with postures. They find her to be someone they can relate to. She is also an artist.

Kandace Laass (KYT-500, MBA).  Kandance is a 500-hour Kripalu-certified teacher. Kandace has practiced yoga for over fifteen years and has been teaching in the Washington, DC area for the past five years. She works with multiple populations-from students in their twenties to those in their nineties-at locations including corporations, community centers, and assisted living centers. She is also a certified Thai Yoga Massage practitioner studying at the Lotus Palm school of Toronto, Canada. Kandace has an MBA degree with a concentration in leadership and currently consults with a number of non-profit organizations.

began practicing yoga and meditation while teaching the martial arts in the early seventies. He has received teacher trainings in Vipassana (insight meditation) from Bhante Gunaratana and in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) from Jon Kabat-Zinn. The theme of Jon’s classes and workshops is “Connecting the Moments" by gently cultivating mindfulness both on and off the cushion. Jon has a personal coaching practice and is a founding director of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and a founding partner of Mind-Body Health Associates. MBHA is a group dedicated to bringing applied mindfulness—via Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs—to hospitals, universities and the workplace. He has been leading Stress Management programs within the Maryland Department of Corrections since 2000.