Alex Dawson

Alex Dawson fell in love with yoga the way many of us do — she loved how it made her feel, so she kept coming back. She had no intention of teaching. Then 9/11 happened. Living in New York, she practiced six days a week to get through it, and six months later found herself on a Broadway stage teaching Kathleen Turner and the cast of The Graduate — with a cheat sheet under her mat.

That was 2002. She never looked back.

With 24 years of full-time teaching and 40+ retreats led across four continents, Alex creates spaces where people genuinely reconnect with themselves and each other — through dynamic vinyasa, breathwork, sound, mantra, humor, and meaningful community. Known for in-the-moment attunement and the rare ability to make ancient practices feel genuinely alive, her teaching is responsive rather than scripted. She listens to the energy of the room, the physical and emotional landscape of the group, and guides the journey accordingly. Every experience is co-created.

Trained in Mindfulness with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, Alex sees yoga as a moving meditation — a return to presence, vitality, and what matters most. Her expertise is guiding groups from fragmentation into coherence through embodied practice, presence, and the transformative power of community.

Based in Los Angeles, she teaches at Equinox and Heimat and leads her online platform Alex Dawson Yoga.

Tony Khalife

Tony Khalife is a musician, retreat leader, and lifelong student of healing traditions whose work bridges music, spirituality, and the ancient science of sound. Born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, Tony discovered music as a path of resilience and inner peace — teaching himself guitar in hiding while the city burned around him. That early discovery shaped everything that followed: a lifelong devotion to music as medicine.

Arriving in Los Angeles in 1984 with two guitars and a handful of English words, Tony studied at the Guitar Institute of Technology before embarking on a decades-long journey through the world's great musical and spiritual traditions. He became a direct disciple of Satguru Sant Keshavadas, served seven years as a Pujari at Wishwa Shanti Ashrama in Oakland, and studied tabla with master drummer Ustad Zakir Hussain. From Indian ragas and Sufi devotional practice to Western harmonies and world music, Tony has spent four decades weaving these traditions into a seamless vibrational language of his own.

A retreat leader, workshop facilitator, and longtime faculty at Esalen Institute, Tony teaches Nada Brahma — the yoga of sound vibration — integrating live music, mantra, movement, breath, and meditation as pathways to collective awakening. His acclaimed recording, The Farther Shore of Light: Sanskrit Songs of Devotion, stands as a testament to his mastery as a devotional artist and multi-instrumentalist.

Tony's mission is simple and unwavering: to raise the world's vibration through music — to be, as he puts it, the rose growing among the ruins, the melody of peace overpowering the guns of war.