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CONTACT

Email: mary@5koshasyoga.com

I’m Mary Hilliker, and I’ve been a yoga practitioner for 30+ years and a certified yoga teacher for 23 years with experience teaching beginners and students of all ages. I’m also a Certified Yoga Therapist, and I use my training and experience to adapt the practice for any person or group.

Classes and Offerings

I offer a range of classes and therapies through 5 Koshas Yoga & Wellness:

  • Individualized Yoga Therapy – In-person at the studio and in Sturgeon Bay at the Economic Development Corporation as well as Online
  • ONLINE – Monday 4:00 pm Yoga Therapeutics: Back, Hips, Knees, Neck, Shoulders & Stress Reduction
  • Specialized online group Yoga Therapy programs – chronic pain, traumatic stress, workplace stress, better sleep
  • Yoga Therapy & Specialty Workshops & Retreats
  • 200 hr/300 hr Yoga Teacher Training (for RYT-200 or RYT-500)

Intentions and Teaching Style

My desire to teach comes from the heart and lifelong professional roles that have had an element of teaching, training or lifestyle coaching. I recognize it’s not easy to change habits and develop new routines. With yoga, I feel that I can help others make changes through small steps. Yoga has helped me in so many ways – physically, physiologically and mentally. I’m driven to share the benefits with others.

My style of teaching Viniyoga is clear, concise, uncomplicated and intended to help a student develop awareness of how yoga practice can impact all the dimensions of being a human. I meet each student or client where they are at, try to understand their personal goals, learn about their interest in yoga and have them actively involved in integrating the tools and practices that help.

I aim to help students feel less tension and pain in their body, gain calm and ease, cultivate clarity and focus and emotional steadiness and resilience. Coming from a family of seven brothers and sisters and a large extended family, I’ve learned to understand the diversity of personalities I encounter in a teaching environment. And I welcome the wisdom and perspectives from age and youth.

Yoga isn’t something that someone does to you, it’s something you do for yourself. It’s essential that each student really understands how to practice and begin to use the tools for themselves. I enjoy seeing the change in every student’s face from the start to the end of the class, being a witness to the subtle shifts and benefits from practicing yoga.

My Favorite Yoga Pose

Vasisthasana or Side Plank Pose – It energizes, strengthVasisthasanaens, empowers and makes me me feel so joyous. It’s a wonderful way to strengthen and lengthen the side body, promote upper body strength and improve breath capacity.

 

 

Credentials and Relevant Experience

  • RDN (Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics)
  • E-RYT 500 (Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher, Yoga Alliance)
  • C-IAYT (Certified Yoga Therapist – International Association of Yoga Therapists)
  • Trained with Gary Kraftsow of the American Viniyoga Institute. Worked with Gary in teacher and Yoga Therapist training programs for 11 years.
  • 30+ years as a registered dietitian/nutritionist and health educator in public health, working in direct care and population-based health around lifestyle change
  • 10 years experience in worksite wellness promotion

Testimonials

Classes

“For the past three years I have attended therapeutic yoga classes with Mary and it has been an amazing and very beneficial experience.  Mary brings a wonderful spirit of optimism and joy to each class. She leads us through the poses with just the right words, not too many, not too few. Her instructions are easy to follow. She works continuously to develop her own yoga and teaching skills and brings those to her students.  After my yoga session with Mary, I always feel like I have had a massage. She gives us practices to do at home. It has been easy to incorporate breathing and body movements in everyday life.”  -V.K.

Yoga for Better Sleep Webinar Series
“What a novel idea, a webinar on sleep yoga in your own home in the evening! This wasn’t a ‘read me to sleep’ class. It had great content and was well organized with explanations and effective tools and strategies to improve your sleep. Everyone could benefit from this course.”

Yoga for Anxiety and Stressful Times Webinar Series
“The course was especially helpful in providing easy breathing applications that REALLY WORK in moments of increased anxiety.” Dorothy B.

Grief & Healing Series
“Thank you so much for offering this series. It gave me something to focus on at a time I seemed to be stuck in a grieving place. I could look forward to Monday evenings with you and Jay and the practice. It was a big help. I feel more focused now and able to move forward. You are a treasure to me.” – D.H.

Private Yoga Therapy
“She has helped me deal with physical challenges like arthritis and osteoporosis. The breathing practices I’ve learned from her have been essential to hold onto my equilibrium in times of acute stress. And she treats everyone like they’re unique and special. Being around Mary is good for my spirit. She gives off a calmness and a light heartedness at the same time.”
-A. J.

“I love the program you designed for me. I am sometimes able to do it during the workday on break or at lunch. I do the program before bed too, although i can tell i’m tired by that time. It all seems to be working very well. It is simple yet enough to work muscle groups without overtaking them into the accompanying fibromyalgia pain. The program is not intimidating to where I have to think about whether I will (or can) do it. I just do it.” – D.K.

Yoga Teacher Training
“You have been an incredibly supportive and caring teacher of Viniyoga! Your approach to life and teaching blend flawlessly. I appreciate your authenticity, care, support and kindness. I am grateful and honored to be a student of yours and forever grateful for your ongoing support of me.” – R.P.

What they say...

“When I think about Mary I realize how she impacts my whole “being”.  She has helped me deal with physical challenges like arthritis and osteoporosis.  

The breathing practices I’ve learned from her have been essential to hold onto my equilibrium in times of acute stress.

She treats everyone like they’re unique and special. Being around Mary is good for my spirit.  She gives off a calmness and a light heartedness at the same time.”  -Anne J.

“For the past three years I have attended therapeutic yoga classes with Mary and it has been an amazing and very beneficial experience.  

Mary brings a wonderful spirit of optimism and joy to each class. She leads us through the poses with just the right words, not too many, not too few. Her instructions are easy to follow.

She works continuously to develop her own yoga and teaching skills and brings those to her students.  After my yoga session with Mary, I always feel like I have had a massage.

She gives us practices to do at home. It has been easy to incorporate breathing and body movements in everyday life.”  -V.K.