Eliana Moreira

Eliana Moreira is a Brazilian-born healer and yoga therapist and the founding director of the Simply Yoga Institute in Summit, New Jersey, an ecumenical yoga therapy center. As a teacher, she focuses on personalizing yoga practices, even in class settings. In her private yoga therapy practice, she sees students with the full gamut of physical and psychological conditions. She teaches classes with a therapeutic focus, integrating the wisdom of various traditions. Her passion as a teacher is to foster the student's deepening intimacy with themselves, and to inspire skillful self-practice for healing, as she has had to do herself. Her yoga therapy work is featured in The Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care.

For 18 years, Eliana has studied hatha and bhakti yoga, yoga philosophy, tantra, and Tibetan Buddhist meditation. She has pursued numerous yoga traditions and apprenticed in Iyengar Yoga therapeutics. She resonates deeply with the teachings of Krishnamacharya, Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Pema Chodron, Gary Kraftsow, Donald Moyer, Angela Farmer, and Victor van Kooten. Eliana is passionate about subtle (energetic) anatomy, shamanism, mantras, chanting, Chinese and Western herbalism, and Ayurvedic, macrobiotic and vegan nutrition and cooking—which greatly inform her teaching of holistic yoga therapy.

Eliana, a modern and expressive dancer, is influenced by Martha Graham and the rhythmic drumming of Brazil. She practiced tae kwon do and capoeira (a dance-like Brazilian martial art) and continues to study qigong and tai chi. Eliana, a Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate, pursued a doctorate in art history, until realizing her calling was yoga.