Instructors

Yoga Loft instructors are a talented and caring team of qualified professionals with diverse backgrounds, including as health professionals, body workers, professional dancers, Pilates teachers, Physiotherapists and mental health specialists. Each instructor has a unique approach in style, form and philosophy. 

Trisha Dunn

Trisha’s yoga journey began primarily as a physical practice to support her training as a professional contemporary dancer. Through 15 years of at times gruelling performances yoga helped maintain the strength and flexibility required and gave her tools to help with nerves. As her love for Yoga grew, she gained 400-hour Yoga Alliance certification from Yoga Arts and Byron Yoga and studied Iyenger at the Omkarananda Ganga Sadan in Rishikesh, India. Trisha is also a Pilates teacher recently gaining a Diploma in Studio and Rehabilitation method. 

Trisha’s classes feed on her diverse training over two decades and a love for dynamic motion. Trisha has a genuine desire to facilitate flow, to help us all connect the body, breath and mind to ease the burdens of our ever thinking, processing and judging mind, and to find joy in our connection to each other. Trisha believes that in developing strength, balance, determination, self-acceptance and calm on the mat these qualities bleed into our everyday life helping us to live well amongst the chaos of modern life. 

Trisha is currently the manager of Yoga Loft and feels an enormous appreciation for the community of teachers and clients she is a part of.

Ash Wilson

Yoga is Ash’s safe place to learn, grown and dive into all aspects of herself. Ash’s personal journey of yoga started about 8 years ago and has since evolved into whatever it needs to be for her, reflecting growth and change constantly. 

In 2017 Ash completed Power Living’s 200-hr vinyasa teacher training and in 2019 completed a 50-hr yin consciousness training with Mark Pheely of West Side Yoga. Ash also works full time as registered nurse in the emergency department, loves pottering in the vegie patch and cooking.

Ash has a deep interest for the contraries and parallels of Eastern and Western philosophy and often draws on this in her classes. Ash holds a passion for teaching and how classes can provide a safe space for people to discover their self and their yoga encouraging students to move from feeling rather than thinking. 

Bec Jones

Forever a yogi student, Bec first started yoga as an accompaniment to her contemporary dance career over 13 years ago. Yoga has become an essential ingredient to her life ever since providing a tangible way to reset, reconnect and restore.

Bec Jones formally studied Ashtanga and Hatha yoga styles and has been a resident yogi instructor at Yoga loft since 2016. Bec’s classes aim to be intuitive and grounding, guiding you to listen to your gut instincts, find comfort with discomfort and develop a deeper awareness of the body and breath. Bec encourages a creative play - leaving space for individual experience & exploration of movement. 

Bec enjoys the energetic benefits of yoga, the calming of the body, the quietening of the mind as well as being physically challenged - the true yang and yin of yoga. 

Lisa Barnett

Lisa has always loved moving- being outside, playing sport, walking, running, adventuring. After an injury that forced Lisa to stop running, a disaster for her at the time, she found Yoga. She realised that she didn’t need to continue to punish and push the body to its physical limits. She learnt to listen, nurture and be still developing a love for yoga that she wanted to share with others. 

Lisa is a full time Physiotherapist with a background in both Pilates and Yoga training. Lisa incorporates her varied knowledge of the body and being into her classes exploring movement with a sense of fun and lightness. 

Lisa is passionate about helping people heal physically and emotionally and gets so much out of teaching people to move with awareness and self-care. Lisa loves teaching and will continue to do so with passion and gratitude. 

David Lees

David's interest in yoga emerged from his professional background in mental health care. He completed Vinyasa Yoga teacher training with Les Leventhal in 2015, and has been further inspired by practicing and learning with amazing teachers and students in diverse traditions including Ashtanga, Power, Forrest, and Yin Yoga.

David’s classes combine ancient principles and contemporary interpretations of yoga with the intrinsic wisdom of each student. Look forward to a playful and challenging practice that helps build foundations of awareness and strength, opens the heart space, and softens the whole being into a state where potential is recognised and nourished.

Gabe Comerford

As a dancer and yoga teacher, Gabe believes in the power of movement & yoga as a tool for change; physically, mentally and emotionally. He is passionate about the healing and subtle powers of Yoga and draws on over 10 years of movement research and teaching experience.  His classes have a deep grounding in anatomical alignment, traditional yoga principles and contemporary yoga philosophy.

Gabe completed his yoga teacher training through Core Yoga Studios and honors the lineage of information of which he is now a part of. This lineage stems from the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda and Satyananda. 

All of Gabe’s teaching incorporates a sense of enquiry, play, individuality and research, bound together by the underlying principle “Teach what is appropriate for an individual” as quoted by T Krishnamacharya. Gabe aims to guide people to have the confidence to create their own yoga practice, to take responsibility for their physical and mental health, and to continually investigate and question.

Skye Redding

With over 3O years of combined practice and study with master yoga teachers including Shandor Remete, Simi Roche, B.K.S Iyengar and R.Sharath Jois, Skye’s unique and inspiring classes thread together the essential aspects of both yoga and mindfulness meditation into clear practical application suitable for anyone wanting to explore and deepen their yoga experience to give their life more peace and meaning.

Miriam Pires

Miriam Pires is a Tantra Yoga Teacher, Eating Psychology Coach and lifelong earthy mama, with a heartfelt passion for helping people get sane around food and their bodies.  

Previously she worked in corporate financial services for 15 years and witnessed how so many were locked in a cycle of fatigue, stress and poor food choices. Channelling her innate wisdom for living a healthy life and almost two decades as a student of yoga she moved into her new path helping people to feel better in their mind, body and spirit. Miriam offers a relaxed space that guides people to the free healing available within, using ancient yoga wisdom of pranayama, asana and meditation coupled with the science of slowing down. 

Miriam regularly teaches yoga and runs eating psychology workshops in Launceston and along the Tamar Valley, she also offers private food and body health coaching.

Caitlin Comerford

As a professional dancer and movement facilitator for over 10 years the influence of dance in Caitlin’s life, coupled with her yoga practice, leads her believe strongly in the power of the body to effect and change both mental and emotional states. On and off the mat, Caitlin aims to create authentic opportunities to build awareness, listen and connect.

As a yoga teacher Caitlin strives to empower people to listen more deeply to their own bodies in order to develop a strong sense of self and a deeper level of physical and mental awareness. Her classes focus on anatomy and alignment and combine the level of detail that comes from a Hatha practice with the fluidity and mobility that comes from Vinyasa. Caitlin plans her classes around a key asana, energy or intention responding to the unique physical attributes of students and the collective energy in the room. 

Claire Holloway

Yoga became an important part of Claire’s life as she juggled a career in the Mining Industry with a passion for long-distance running and swimming. Yoga provided the relief and balance she needed to maintain her demanding work and fitness schedule. A few health setbacks soon saw her turning more and more to yoga and learning about its many other facets and benefits. 

Claire studied through the Yoga and Integrative Medicine Institute. Since her hatha-influenced 350-hr training, she has undertaken further studies in pre- and post-natal yoga with extension studies in pelvic anatomy and physiology and Ayurveda.

Her approach involves finding a middle ground between biomechanics and metaphysics, then guiding with inclusive and simple language. She seeks to empower her students to tune in to what their own body needs and draw upon the energy within and around them. 

Outside of yoga, Claire is an active community member, sitting on the board of both a local farmer’s market and school. At weekends, she enjoys exploring all Northwest Tasmania has to offer, especially the excellent local produce and wine, with her husband and young son.

Ruth Murphy

Ruth was introduced to yoga at a young age but was far more interested in running and didn’t think much of yoga until years later! Once re-discovered, the practice became an integral part of her life as a way to find strength, peace and balance. Curious about energetic practices she became an Usui Reiki practitioner and continued on to complete yoga training with Cat Kabira, Kari Jacobson (Forrest Yoga), Emil Wendel (yoga philosophy), and Acacia Jade (Fly High aerial yoga). 

Ruth’s classes are fun, creative and accessible encouraging you to be fully present in body and breath. With the aim of not taking herself or life too seriously, no matter how intense the class may get, Ruth’s light-hearted and gentle approach encourages her students to invite joy and exploration into their practice.

Currently studying a Graduate Certificate in Yoga Therapy, this teaching direction was brought about through recovering from a motor accident. This experience inspires her to help others cope with physical injuries, mental and emotional struggles, or just find clarity, connection and grounding after a hectic day. Ruth believes that yoga is truly for everyone and everybody.