Meet Our Teachers
Experienced teachers, each with their own approach,
brought together by a shared love of yoga and community
Ale Retamales
Founder · RYT 500
Ale began teaching yoga in her Hood River garage in 2020. Her powerful voice, creative sequencing, and calm presence quickly drew a loyal community. In 2021, she opened Machi Yoga in the Heights, naming the studio after the Indigenous healers of her native Chile.
Her alignment-based, breath-led classes are strong, challenging, and thoughtfully sequenced. Ale hopes each practice leaves behind a residue that helps you feel more grounded, awake, and joyful.
Sarah Smeby
RYT 500 · YACEP
Sarah began her yoga journey nearly 30 years ago, discovering a practice that evolves alongside life itself. Teaching has become a natural extension of that journey—a way to deepen her own understanding while helping others find the joy, peace, and steadiness yoga offers.
In Sarah’s classes, alignment is woven with humor, curiosity, and relatable, real-life applications. Her slowly flowing sequences invite mindful exploration and connection, both within and among the community.
Sarah holds E-RYT 200, RYT 500, and YACEP credentials, with certifications in Yoga Nidra, Yin, Restorative, Trauma-Informed, and Adaptive Yoga.
Kelly Carsley
RYT 500· Yoga Therapist
Kelly has over 20 years of yoga practice, with a focus on Mindful/Therapeutic Yoga and Meditation. With the mantra “Live with intention,” she keeps her practice and teaching in alignment with Ayurveda, the rhythms of nature, and the seasons.
Kelly believes we all have an inner light that we come home to through yoga. Her teaching helps students release what stands in the way of inner peace and find a greater sense of joy, wholeness, and ease.
Erin Solveig
RYT-200
Erin has had a relationship with yoga for over 10 years. She loves the way yoga can invite a deeper connection to self through movement, breath, and body awareness. Her classes blend inspiration from her background in bodywork, personal training, endurance athletics, somatic experiencing, and vipassana meditation. Erin's teaching style is intended to be adaptable and invitational, so show up as you are and move as you need. Her hope is that you will be inspired to either soften around those stuck places or move through them with fueled intensity.
Gabe Rivers
RYT 200
Gabriel has been sharing the gifts of yoga, energy, and sound healing since 2014. His lineage is Baptiste Vinyasa and Ashtanga, but he has balanced the fire of his practice through his devotion to chanting and sound healing.
Gabriel has been a sponsored yoga brand athlete, and his journey has led him from leading handstand workshops to opening a sound healing temple in Seattle. He has filmed with the likes of Seane Corn and Patrick Beach and taught yoga internationally. This culmination of experiences is embodied in his teaching style.
Now a Gorge resident, Gabriel looks forward to sharing his perspective on balance, personal peace, and joyous living.
Shana Rose
RYT 200
Shana loves to live her life by the philosophical principles of the eightfold path, practicing gratitude for nature, food, and people. She sees everything as sacred and celebrates it all with ritual.
She enjoys teaching Ayurveda, meditation, and yoga, and also has a spiritual life coaching business. Shana has lived with Indigenous shamanic communities in Guatemala and Mexico, holding space for plant medicine ceremonies. During her work exchange at the Yoga Forest retreat center, she enjoyed connecting with travelers through Ayurvedic Abhyanga massage, cupping, and facials.
Outside the studio, you can find her making art in her hammock or rollerblading by the water.
Jess McGimsey
500 E-RYT
Jessica has been teaching yoga since 2006 and leading teacher trainings since 2014. She's the founder of Peace Love and Yoga (PLAY) in Carlsbad, California, and Living Beyond the Mat, where she now guides teacher trainings, retreats, and mentorship programs for the global yoga community.
Jessica found her way to yoga through a heated vinyasa class that changed everything for her. She opened PLAY in 2010 and has been sharing that love of movement ever since. She holds a 500 E-RYT, along with certifications in Pilates, AFAA group exercise, and more, and is currently training in yoga therapy.
For Jessica, yoga is about more than what happens on the mat. She's passionate about helping students and teachers find balance, build sustainable practices, and carry what they learn into everyday life.
Kyle Bonfert
Kyle completed his teacher training in 2015 and has been teaching ever since. He has continued to evolve his practice through workshop series with Dylan Werner and Patrick Beach, and his classes are inspired by both what he has learned and what he has experienced.
His classes give students an opportunity to get into their bodies and explore with concise, meaningful direction, while also offering ways to take the teachings of yoga off the mat.
Kyle’s true love is the handstand and arm balance side of the practice. He has spent years understanding the mechanics and preparation it takes to find balance in these postures while keeping the process light and positive. For Kyle, finding that balance can be an amazing form of meditation—and he’s always psyched to share it.
Texanna Bossoff
RYT 200
Texanna began her yoga journey roughly 20 years ago in search of pain relief. The journey led her to find passion in Power and Vinyasa yoga. The strength developed over time with a consistent practice relieved much of the pain she experienced.
Like many other teachers, her love for yoga led her to teacher training, rather than a desire to teach. In 2016 she studied based on the Journey into Power by Baron Baptiste. The first class she taught 10 years ago was actually by accident! On her mat, ten minutes after the class was due to start, the owner pulled her aside and said the the teacher who was scheduled to teach the class couldn't make it, so he asked her to teach the class. Encouraged by her biggest supporter, her husband, she did it! Later, recognizing a real need in the small town of Stevenson for yoga teachers, she began teaching regular classes.
Texanna wants you to show up with no expectations and make your practice your own. It is after all, a practice, not a perfect!
Diane Sillan
RYT 200
Ahimsa, the practice of non-harm toward ourselves, others, and the world around us- is at the heart of Diane’s yoga practice and teaching.
A 20-year Ironman, Diane came to yoga as an essential counterbalance to endurance training: a way to move with greater awareness, stay injury-free, and cultivate a deeper connection between body and mind.
Her practice has been shaped by decades of studying with some of Los Angeles’ most inspiring teachers, including Bryan Kest, Seane Corn, Vinny Marino, and Ashtanga teachers Chuck and Maty of YogaWorks. She also produced Bryan Kest’s original yoga video series for Warner Bros. In 2025, Diane completed her RYT-200 with Ale and Jess at Machi, whose creative teaching styles helped her find her own authentic voice as a teacher.
An avid wingfoiler and gravel cyclist, Diane loves movement that challenges, surprises, and brings us fully into the present moment. Her classes encourage students to explore their edge with curiosity and intention—building strength, awareness, and joy while honoring the practice of ahimsa.
Mica Vonne
RYT 200
Mica has been practicing yoga and the healing arts for over 20 years in the Columbia River Gorge. Drawing from a diverse metaphysical tool bag, she finds joy in helping others recognize patterns in the mind, body, and spirit to experience greater well-being.
Mica views yoga as energy in motion, weaving mindful attention, curiosity, neuroplasticity, and sound healing into her gentle and vinyasa practices. A licensed chiropractic physician, craniosacral therapist, and Reiki master, she brings extensive healing arts experience to her teaching with calm confidence and warm humor.
Emily Martin
Emily is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher and student of the Venerable Thay Kozen, with training under Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. She also teaches Forest Bathing, or Shinrin Yoku, as shared with her through the Mt. Adams Buddhist Temple.
Guided by integrity, authenticity, and compassion, Emily blends Buddhist principles, Western scientific thought, and a deep reverence for the natural world. Her teaching is adaptable and grounded in the belief that mindfulness can help us reconnect with ourselves, one another, and the interconnectedness of life.