Yoga for your life. Not for your Instagram.

Welcome! I’m Kelley Curran, the founder of Well & Kell. I teach in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley, New York City or wherever Zoom connects us.

I’ve been practicing yoga for over 25 years. My practice has changed with my body, as osteoarthritis has worn both my knees down to bone-on-bone.

As my knees got worse, I found myself starting to avoid going to class, because I was feeling like my practice was “wrong” — even, as a yoga teacher, knowing that this is not what yoga is about.

I found a new way. I threw out my preconceived notions. At home on my mat, I began really listening to my body, and I found ways to move that felt good for me. This yoga is different from what you see on a Yoga Journal cover. I began to feel comfortable in my own skin again.

At Well & Kell, I teach my students to hear their body’s feedback and to learn to interpret what that looks like in their yoga practice.

I consider it my personal mission to get everybody who wants to experience the benefits of yoga onto the mat. Or into the chair. Or, know what? Some days yoga happens sitting up in bed, leaning against pillows.

I work from the inside out, finding the intent of the pose, and then finding a way to express that intent in each individual body. There is no modification that’s going to make a full-wheel backbend available to my knees. That’s why my approach is options, not modifications.

I know that sticking-out-like-a-sore-thumb feeling of standing, awkward, in class as everyone else sinks into a deep squat for garland pose. I build my instruction around making sure you never have that feeling. Yoga class can be intimidating. Especially if you are new to yoga or are working with a condition or injury. (And aren’t we all working with some kind of condition: injury, chronic pain, beginner-itis?)

In my eight years as a yoga instructor and personal trainer, it’s been my honor to lead confident dancers and fellow triathletes as well as arthritis sufferers, physical rehabilitation patients and nervous beginners. In my class, there is no such thing as too old, too inflexible, or too broken. Above all, I want you to remember that you are the expert on you. You have the power to hear what your body is telling you, and turn that feedback into the movement that your body needs. I share my knowledge and tools to help you make the best and safest decisions for you in all my sessions and classes. However, I want you to feel empowered to take this way of listening to your body and trusting yourself in any class.

I invite you to drop what you think yoga looks like, and join me in exploring what it could feel like. It’s not about balancing on your pinkies, but balancing your life.