MEET YOUR RETREAT LEADER: Katie Jacobson

Katie is a yoga teacher, psychotherapist, Ayurvedic health counselor, and forever student based in her hometown, Santa Cruz, CA. Katie’s yoga journey started twenty years ago when she was a competitive athlete in high school. It was her love for movement that initially sparked her interest in the practice. During challenging college years, the mat became a place of refuge and Katie experienced deeper transformative and healing benefits on and off the mat.

Katie completed her first yoga teacher training with Yogi Vishvketu in Rishikesh, India. She continues to study with and assist San Francisco based teacher, Janet Stone, and draws inspiration from yin yoga teachers Sarah Powers and Paul Grilley. Katie’s classes are deeply nourishing, as she offers students a compassionate space to look inward, cultivate steadiness and ease, and strengthen and stretch both body and mind. With an Ayurvedic lens, classes are typically seasonally inspired to support alignment and well-being. Katie invites students to reconnect with their inner wisdom and remember their innate wholeness.

Nature is Katie’s greatest teacher — she loves hiking and exploring new trails, swimming in the sea, wandering farmers markets, cooking and sharing meals, dancing and gathering with community.

MEET YOUR RETREAT LEADER: Jessica Weitzenhoffer

Jessica is a yoga teacher, psychotherapist, and forever student living in Santa Cruz, CA – her home of 14 years. Jessica first discovered yoga in her hometown Santa Monica when she was 12. In High School she attended Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga studio weekly after school. In 2014 she completed her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training with Joan Hyman of YogaWorks Los Angeles, where her love affair with yoga and the calling to share it with others deepened. Over the years she’s studied with Maty Ezraty, Annie Carpenter, Janet Stone, Shiva Rae, Tias Little, Jason Crandell and Patrick Beach, and traveled to the motherland India to dig her feet into yoga’s geographical source. Jessica completed her 300-hour & Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training with Mount Madonna Center, where she lived and volunteered in the Ayurveda and Yoga Teacher Training departments for 3 years, immersing herself in the teachings of Baba Hari Dass and Classical Aṣhțāṅga Yoga. Jessica is also a trained and certified Animal Flow teacher.

Jessica, RYT 500, brings her embodied wisdom and somatic precision into each of her classes, weaving down-to-Earth insights and breath into a purposeful and powerful vinyasa flow grounded in ritual, self-inquiry, functional movement, and individualized alignment. Her classes are intentional and fun, intelligent and creative, challenging and accessible, sweaty and heartfelt, paying homage to traditional hatha vinyasa with a practical and functional approach to asana built for today’s bodies and minds. With a whole-hearted commitment to honoring the teachings of yoga, Jessica’s classes are enriched by yoga philosophy, yoga mythology, Ayurveda, psychology, and the wisdom of daily life. Because we are designed to move, Jessica encourages personal exploration and freedom of movement, embracing methods that stoke the fire that burns deep within us to stand with power, clarity, and courage in an ever-changing world.

In Jessica’s free time, she loves to take her kitty on walks through the redwood forest, go on adventures with her beloved, gather in community, immerse herself in live music, and dance all night under the stars.

OWNER OF PLEASURE POINT YOGA: Megan McAllister

Megan Brooke McAllister is the inspired owner, yogini, and dance / sacred movement instructor at Pleasure Point Yoga and Pleasure Point Dance. Megan is registered with the Yoga Alliance as a RYT-500, is Zumba Instructor Certified and dance enthusiast, and leads yoga and dance retreats around the world. Megan is deeply connected with the cosmos, the mystical, the moon, directions and elements, teaching embodied movement inspired with mudra, mantra, meditation, pranayama and sacred movement to connect back with sacred self, to sit with the light and the dark, while honoring and integrating all parts. She has been leading and participating in Goddess Circles, Ritual, & Retreats, working with the goddess, ritual and ceremony for over 25 Years. Former executive director in high technology in Silicon Valley, she holds BAs in Economics from UCSC and MBA from Santa Clara University. She found the jewel of her heart as student at Pleasure Point Yoga, which offered her refuge and a loving container to heal and awaken to her soul’s calling.

“Dance is my Religion. Yoga is my Heart” ~ Megan
“Mind over matter; Heart over mind” ~ Megan
“Dream Big. Dream Delicious. The Universe will respond bigger, bolder, and more beautiful than your wildest dreams beyond the edges of your imagination”. ~ Megan