About Us

                                        Jacqueline Wheeler

I started practicing yoga in 1996 at the original (one and only at that time) Bikram Yoga College of India in Seattle, Washington. I was extremely intimidated to go to class because I thought you had to be flexible. At the time I didn’t think I would ever be able to touch my toes. However, I was in constant pain with shoulder issues from a kayaking incident, which was getting worse as I tried to make a living woodworking, so I bit the bullet and went to class. After my first class I quickly realized that my shoulder was the least of my problems. I went back to class to heal my head and simply learn ‘to focus one point in the mirror for 60 seconds’. My life, my body, my soul has been improving ever since! Thank you Bikram Yoga!

Bits of History

Winter 1999: Upon gaining a love for my home town, SLC, I returned to enjoy the beauty of the mountains that I couldn’t appreciate the 1st 18 years of my life.
Fall 2000: went to the Bikram Yoga teacher training.
Winter 2000 – 2002: taught yoga at Our Lady of the Snow and Snowbird Cliff Spa.
Summer 2001: started teaching the 1st day of Bikram Yoga Sugarhouse.
December 2003: opening day of Bikram Yoga Sandy!

Alex Wheeler

Alex began dabbling in yoga in the late 90’s but was always too busy skiing, climbing, running and biking to commit to a regular practice. In 2000, while on an extended road trip with Jackie, he experienced his first Bikram Yoga class in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Yes, that’s right. Jackie convinced Alex to drive from Salt Lake City to Cabo to take a yoga class with her first Bikram Yoga teacher.

Alex intuitively new this trip was about more than taking a yoga class. At the time he had no idea how powerful of a path yoga could be to a deeper understanding of oneself. Slowly but surely Alex began a more regular yoga practice, started to feel healthier, and to understand more deeply the benefits of a consistent practice.

Following a major ski accident in 2001 he wholeheartedly jumped into his yoga practice. “I had no choice, two knee surgeries later all my activities had come to a halt. I decided it was time to slow down and learn more about yoga.” Due to his injuries, Alex’s practice was limited to the use of a chair. Committed to healing, with patience and through regular practice, his knee healed and his understanding of yoga - and himself - grew.
In 2003 Alex graduated from Bikram’s 500+ hour, 9-week yoga teacher training and soon thereafter opened Bikram Yoga Sandy with his now wife, Jackie. Since his graduation, Alex has had extensive yoga asana training with Bikram and Rajashree Choudhury as well as Tony Sanchez and many others.

Using the experiences of healing from physical injuries, Alex continues to learn daily about the process of healing through yoga and is committed to becoming a better yoga teacher as he explores the ultimate intention of self understanding. He believes experienced teachers are a must for students and their growth but one must ultimately find the answers from within. “Continued practice is where I learn the most, whether in asana, or stillness, the journey never ends.”

When not at the studio growing his teaching and practice you can find Alex playing in the mountains with his wife, Jackie and their son, Boone. Or fishing in a nearby river.

Lisa Boone 

I believe Yoga is not something we do, it is a way of being. When I was in high school, I attended my first yoga class at my local gym. I remember the blissful feeling I carried with me that day and knew I had to have more! In 2003 I began practicing Ashtanga yoga in Las Vegas. I loved the community vibe in this small studio and really enjoyed the challenge with Ashtanga. I moved to Utah in the fall of 2004. Luckily I bought a home very close to Bikram Yoga Sandy. I was on a quest to fulfill my yoga practice; my intuition was my driver, a very loud driver at that! I stepped into the Sandy studio Spring 2005 and never looked back. After a couple of months of practicing four or five times a week, I remember colors being more vivid and felt like I was opening. The first couple years, though not easy but worth it, I learned to let go of a lot of emotional baggage which helped me to begin to discover my authentic Self. I felt a sense of coming home and remembrance within that led me to commit to my practice and decide to become a teacher of Bikram Yoga in the Spring 2007. In the Fall of 2011 I am looking forward to becoming KYTT certified and explore teaching Yoga to children too. I am in awe of the limitless path that Yoga will provide. Such depths physically but also mentally and spiritually. I continually am filled with gratitude and inspiration by all the students, and have great respect for each individuals practice. I also spend my time playing in the Wasatch mountains through the seasons, listening to music, cooking, gardening, creating with clay through pottery, making jewelry, and laughing a lot with my two beautiful daughters.

Julie Merwin

Julie grew up in Connecticut and moved to Utah in 1996, after graduating from Springfield College, MA with a B.S. in Health/Fitness. A competitive gymnast for 17 years, she transitioned to rock climbing, eventually to become co-owner of a climbing gym. Julie has experience coaching gymnastics, climbing, and general fitness in both clinical and recreational/gym settings. She has also done some team building/ ropes course facilitation.
Julie began teaching Bikram Yoga in the fall of 2006 after a friend introduced her to the practice 4 years before. She decided to become an instructor as an extension of her own personal practice. “Bikram yoga is a practice where you’re excuses, and patterns are constantly being shown to you, if you choose to look. It’s an arena where you can dissolve your self-imposed limitations, and your fears. Not only does your practice offer great health benefits it is also an amazing tool for self-realization. I knew that if I wanted to continue to grow I had to get up on the podium.”

“Being an instructor is a yoga practice in itself. For me, my physical practice gave me a lot, and it was also something that came pretty naturally to me, what didn’t come naturally to me was standing up on a podium and being willing to speak, to lead a group of people through their own trials and tribulations as they grew in there own practice…frankly that scared the crap out of me! Teaching has a funny way of amplifying whatever issues, and self judgments still plague you personally. You have to learn to make your peace with what ever shows up in class on any particular day. To me that, ultimately, is doing yoga…the place were you have total awareness of everything, and no judgment on any of it. My students are my teachers. I enjoy learning from what they reflect back at me, as much as I enjoy watching them transform and grow.”

Julie has also had the honor of demonstrating her yoga practice in the Bishnu Gosh National Yoga competitions in 2007 and 2008. In addition to her athletic creativity, Julie is also an artist and energy worker. She creates blown glass sculptural pieces as well as jewelry.

Julie began practicing various modalities of energy work in 2002 and has been Access Consciousness Practitioner/Facilitator since 2007. Access offers many tools for clearing limitations, facilitating awareness, which in turn allows the ability to generate the life you’d truly like to create. Julie teaches classes in Access and also does private sessions. 
  

Marc Linton 

Marc began practicing Bikram Yoga in 2006 after years of conventional physical and drug therapies did not alleviate the painful, daily muscle spasms in his back. Having had a severe motorcycle accident in 2002. he was left with multiple injuries, including
compressed vertebrae, soft tissue damage throughout his body, and a fractured scull and Traumatic Brain Injury. "I was dealing with an extremely severe post-concussive syndrome that was manifesting in severe
depression, anxiety, insomnia, memory & socialization issues. I came to yoga for my back pain,  but I found it healing all of the issues I was dealing with including the brain injury." "My memory improved, depression lifted and about six months into practice, I was out of pain and decided I needed to teach this yoga. I remember thinking "How do people not know this?""  Almost exactly two years after he began his practice, and as he continued to heal he was granted  a full scholarship, and attended teacher training with Bikram in he fall of 2008. Upon returning from teacher training, Marc began teaching at Bikram yoga Sandy, and subsequently took on teaching at, and managing the Bikram Ogden studio for the summer, returning to teaching full time in Sandy that fall.  "I tell people that If someone would have said to me 10 years ago that I was going to be a yoga  teacher I would have laughed . . . but here I am. I teach it because it works. I teach it because it gave me my life back."  Marc enjoys Boarding (snow, wake, and surf), Cycling (road and mountain), rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, mixing underground dance music, and generally having a good time. "Don't be afraid of dying. Be afraid of not living!"

Natalie Wong

Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Natalie moved to Salt Lake after meeting and marrying her Utah native husband.

Natalie has been practicing yoga since 2005 as a means to rehabilitate her knee as a result of volleyball and work related injuries. Immediately after beginning Bikram Yoga, Natalie fell in love with the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the study and set her sights on becoming a teacher herself. In 2010, Natalie was certified by Bikram Choudhury himself to instruct and has been teaching at the Sandy Studio ever since.

Outside of Yoga, Natalie enjoys reading, traveling, trying new foods, and spending time with her husband and rabbit 'Biscuit'.

Ronda Swensen

I started my journey with this crazy thing called “hot yoga” in what better state then Atlanta, Georgia “Hot Lanta” in April 2006. I was in a desperate need to lose weight and after trying everything else I thought “how bad could hot yoga be”, as I already live in one of the most hot and humid states in the country. It was then and there that I became addicted with Bikram Yoga. Totally hooked after my first class I had to be part of this great life improving physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. Don’t get me wrong I was intimidated at first. I didn’t know a thing about Yoga, and definitely was not a “size two, ex-gymnast, dancer, and contortionist” either. I was just a truly average woman with all my flaws, desiring to be healthier and happier with myself. I found all that and more with Bikram Yoga.

I never expected to become an instructor, I was working all day behind a computer doing research and before I knew it I was planning everything around my yoga practice. I then decided that in order for me to do this yoga for the rest of my life, I must become a teacher. I worked hard and with the support of my fiancé, now husband, I was able to go to Teacher Training in April 2009 in Palm Springs, California.

Not even a year into teaching; my husband’s career brought us to Utah, which happened to be during my first pregnancy. I had already practiced at the Bikram Yoga Sandy Studio during previous visits to the area, but when I showed up 6 months pregnant I never expected to be able to join their family of teachers. The entire studio family was welcoming to my ever growing belly and ankles. I was lucky enough to teach right up to the day before I gave birth to my greatest joy Owen. Being pregnant and practicing was truly a great experience. I absolutely love the fact that I am a mother now and a Bikram Yoga Teacher. I do believe the two are a perfect combination. Being a mother makes me a better teacher and being a teacher makes me a better mother.

This yoga has changed my life in more ways than I could have ever imagined! I just hope I can be an example for anyone who doesn’t think it is for them. I wish you all the best in your yoga journey, and hope to see you in the HOT room soon!!!

Roxanne Joesten

Roxanne (close friends call her Rox or Roxy) has lived in Salt Lake for over thirty years, but considers herself a Midwesterner at heart and culturally Californian. She has four daughters: Kiersten, Carly, Chloe, and Zoë. Rox is engaged to American poet, Joel Long; their wedding is planned for the summer of 2012.

Rox started practicing Bikram yoga in the fall of 2002. Initially, “the yoga” was a good way to balance out her life as a recreational athlete (a middle-of-the-pack long distance runner). However, Bikram yoga soon became not only her primary physical outlet but also a powerful tool and medium for mental and spiritual growth.  

Rox became a certified Bikram instructor in the summer of 2004. During the grueling nine-week teacher’s training session, she chose to live with her elderly parents in Simi Valley and commute every day (3 hours round trip) to the Bikram Yoga College of India in Los Angeles. Rox used her time on the grid locked L.A. freeways to practice the Bikram dialogue. She also flew back to Salt Lake City most weekends to work her shift at Delta Air Lines, then hopped on a plane every Sunday night to return to L.A. to get her “toes on the line” Monday mornings.

Rox has earned two undergraduate degrees, one in psychology, and one in American Sign Language interpreting, and graduated with a master’s degree in speech-language pathology in May 2008.After 20 years of employment with Delta Air Lines, she took an early retirement package and transitioned into a new career as a school-based speech-language pathologist.

Rox doesn’t consider being a Bikram yoga instructor “just a second job”. She considers her practice and her teaching a way of life.

Meryl Biksacky

Meryl found herself at the Bikram Yoga SLC studio shortly after making a life changing decision to move back to Salt Lake after attending college and living in Chicago, her hometown, for nearly 5 years. In the first few minutes before class on that fateful April day in 2005, she wondered how people could possibly tolerate this heat…..and then class began and she realized that you were expected to move in it! As one hour came and went, she looked up in desperation at the clock, not realizing that the class was actually 90 minutes long—she had come ill-prepared mentally. She did not manage to stay in the room the entire time for her first class and afterwards wondered if she would ever step foot in Bikram’s torture chamber again. After some positive encouragement from the teacher that night, Meryl would come again and has continued to maintain a steady practice over the years. She knew after those first few months that one day she would teach this yoga.

In the fall of 2008, after saving her pennies for a few years while working in the biotech industry, she bid adieu to her lab position and immersed herself completely in the intense and invaluable experience that is Bikram Yoga Teacher Training. Words cannot describe what this yoga has taught and continues to teach her about her Self, her fellow humans, and the relationships that bind us together. The least she can do is attempt to offer this awakening of consciousness to her students by leading them through their own 90 minute moving meditation. Catch a class with her and soak up all the accompanying dizziness, nausea, and pure, utter bliss!

Louis Stanley

Auspiciously, in the fall of 1999, I attended my first class and soon realized that perceptions of limitation mattered far less than ability to change. By focusing more on potential, anything my physical body could not yet do paled in comparison to overcoming obstacles on the road to recovery. Simply trying as best I could and never giving up, more benefits slowly and gently materialized. Beyond the physical realities of building strength, developing flexibility, and discovering some semblance of balance, though, I began to sincerely appreciate the calmness achieved in my turbulent mind. This beautiful new faith blossomed with self-control, determination, concentration, and patience, above all else.

Accordingly, in the spring of 2005, I applied myself whole-heartedly to the infinite work of being a certified instructor. Ever since embarking on this karmic course, my endeavor to share Bikram’s method with precision, intensity, and consistency has been a primary guiding life force. I have witnessed countless individuals experience the efficacy of hatha yoga as a healing modality…regardless of acute/chronic injuries or screw loose brains! At the end of the day, everybody finds some freedom in the same process of learning to breathe normally, actualizing correct effort, and maintaining relative stillness. My advice to all students: practice, practice, practice peace relentlessly, with an adventurous spirit, and every class will be a new beginning.nausea, and pure, utter bliss!

Nancy Sears

I walked into my first Bikram Yoga Studio in 2002 in Seatle, Washington and immediately fell in love with the challenge of the practice - from the intense physicality to the mental and spiritual strength demanded of me in each class. Over the past nine years I have come to understand that Bikram Yoga brings more peace and joy to my life than perhaps anything else I've ever done.

With this peace comes the belief in myself and a tenacity to accomplish those things I desire - from climbing mountains to having more honest and intimate relationships with others to a deeper understanding and appreciation of who I am as an individual and my ability to have a positive impact on the world around me.

Teaching Bikram Yoga embodies being in a body I love, having a mind focused on happiness and peace, and being a buoyant and inspiring spirit to those around me.