Laurah Klepinger-Mathew is a writer, dancer, Yoga teacher and massage therapist, based in Syracuse, New York. She completed the MA and MFA degrees at UCLA, in the Department of World Arts and Cultures and the Bachelor of Dance Arts degree with High Honors at the University of Michigan. Her Yoga training is in the Sivananda tradition of Integral Yoga, and she practices both Circulatory and Ayurvedic Massage.
Throughout her graduate work at UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures, Laurah wrote critical and performative essays on American "New Age" spirituality and the practice of Yoga in the U.S. As a Teaching Associate at UCLA, she taught undergraduate courses in Yoga, Performance Studies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. She also developed a course outlining the emergence of Yoga as a form of popular spirituality and exercise practice in the U.S. cultural milieu. The course was taught five times from 2000-2003 and engaged students in ethnographic research projects on the varieties of Yoga in Los Angeles.
Laurah completed a Tamil Language Fellowship with the American Institute of Indian Studies in Madurai, Tamil Nadu in 2005-2006. She is currently working on her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Syracuse University. Her graduate studies in Syracuse have been supported by a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant for Tamil language. She also received FLAS support in summers 2007 and 2008 and an American Institute of Indian Studies Language Fellowship, academic year 2008-2009, for study of Malayalam in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In April 2010, she will begin doctoral research in Kerala and Tamil Nadu on "Globalized Yoga in South India," supported by a Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Award.
When not in India, Laurah maintains a small freelance Yoga teaching and massage practice out of her home in Syracuse, NY, with her husband Biju Klepinger-Mathew. She has years of experience teaching Yoga, including at UCLA and in several studios in the L.A. area. She has also taught in New York city, in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan and in Sivananda Ashrams and centers in India, Canada and the Bahamas. She has taught dancers, seniors, and athletes, and also has significant experience teaching children, including as Director of the Children’s Yoga Camp at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in Grass Valley, California, from 2001-2004 and for 2 years as a teacher at the Chelsea International Children’s Workshop in New York, NY.
E-mail Laurah at laurahk@talkingdancer.com