Micki Leventhal, certified JourneyDance and Yoga instructor

Micki has had a life-long avocational involvement in dance and movement. According to her mother, Micki began dancing before she could walk. She was a ‘baby ballerina', beginning her studies at age three. Her first performance – at age five – was on the stage of the Chicago Opera House in a ballet school recital. After that things went downhill career-wise. She continued ballet classes until age 14 and then added Jazz and Modern, continuing those forms on and off into her 40s, at some point pretty much coming to terms with the fact that her path did not include a professional career in dance.

Micki came to Yoga in the mid 1990s (at her ‘midlife crisis') as an alternative to studio-based dance and as an outgrowth of her Buddhist studies. After practicing Hatha and flow yoga for nearly a decade, including workshops with John Friend, Sara Powers, Erich Schiffmann, Rod Stryker, Rama Birch, Stephen Cope and many others, Micki was called to teach and took her certification training at the Chicago Temple of Kriya Yoga .

Micki believes strongly in a holistic approach to Hatha based on sound principles of alignment and accommodation for individual needs, emphasizing connection to spirit through movement.

Her practice of Yoga, and a growing involvement with InterPlay , an improvisational movement and vocalization form grounded in the values of community and the integration of body, mind and spirit, helped Micki begin to approach dance and movement as an experience of pure joy and an authentic expression of BodySpirit. This attitude adjustment led her to Kripalu Center's DanceKinetics, which in turn led her to JourneyDance. She took her JourneyDance teacher training with Toni Bergens, who developed the form.

Balancing Yoga, Interplay, and JourneyDance with a full-time career in higher education communications, Micki teaches part time in Chicago and the near-west Chicago suburban area. She can be reached by writing micki@miriams-dance.com .