#ODDlight: Yoni Berk

This April we're shedding some #ODDlight on the cool, calm, collected, Yoni Berk. If you haven't taken class with him yet, get. on. it. You can FLOW with him on Monday and Tuesday nights in Silverlake!

Name: Yonatan Shimon Wallin Berk

Nick Name: Yoni, or The Schlemiel of Encino

Hometown: Novato, CA

Favorite Place: Ras Shaitan, Sinai, Egypt

Favorite color: Broan

What’s your sign? Sagittarius

Uh….. I’ll say like the 5th most embarrassing moment because why would I tell you about the time I shit my pants or whatever. One time while teaching I wanted to instruct getting into happy baby (Ananda Balasana). Happy baby pose also goes by another name… “Dead bug.” So I ended up accidentally blending the two names together and it… did not come out right :/

I'm self-taught in over 10 different musical instruments

Can it be one of my favorite short short stories????

Creating balance between the body, mind, and soul.

It healed me, and maybe somehow I can help others heal themselves or at least put them on that path.

I had an amazing teacher at Santa Barbara City College of all places who taught me so much about yoga and one time on a road trip I was making a pit stop in SLO and over lunch the thought about becoming a teacher just set off like a million light bulbs and I thought “I can do that!"

Dave Harrington’s edit of Paul Simon - Can’t Run. Literally never gets old for me and it FUCKIN SLAPS

What is your favorite pose or flow? Why?

Half pigeon. Everything we do and don’t do makes its way to our hips and as long as we are doing the pose correctly for our body, it is so profound and provides so much relief and benefits.

Any time a student has a eureka moment. That’s all it takes for me to remind myself why I got certified 11 years ago

My fiancé and I had just moved to LA from Santa Barbara and literally all the people who we trusted who knew about the yoga community kept mentioning ODD and I knew it was the right fit from the first class I took.

Blocks. They’re so versatile and allow us to modify poses that we need to modify.

SOVA, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Innocence Project

@yoniberk

Depends if they suck or not. Luckily all my bosses rule so I would absolutely tell them. Gotta have good people’s backs.

Knowing to read/write/speak every single language ever created fluently

The Lemon by Mohamed Mrabet

I’ve only had 2 lucid dreams that I remember and I rarely dream.