Carlyn E. Sikes

Carlyn Eileen Sikes (E-RYT, MFA) as seen to the right is full-time Faculty and Director of Yoga and Yoga Teacher Training here at SCC. Carlyn has studied many different styles of yoga, but is devoted to the practice of Iyengar style hatha yoga with Manouso Manos as her primary teacher. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from ASU. Carlyn is a registered, certified yoga teacher with the National Yoga Alliance at the Experienced 500 hour level and is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Her specialties are in asana instruction and yoga therapeutics.

Carlyn Sikes began her career in movement with ballet when she was two years old. She continued with her ballet training, semi-seriously, until she graduated from high school. She found a passion for movement, modern dance in particular, and went on to major in dance in college, graduating first from University of Colorado-Boulder with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, and then from Arizona State University with a Master of Fine Arts in Dance.

During the course of her studies in dance, Carlyn met Elizabeth Mandeville, who had created a style of modern dance based on biomechanical principles of movement. It was a wonderful combination of the freedom of exploration, movement, and expression inherent in modern dance philosophy, coupled with the structure of scientific principles of movement, that created an attitude that all things were possible. Carlyn credits her experience and training in this style of movement as the pre-cursor to her future passion for yoga.

After dancing semi-professionally in local dance companies Carlyn decided the life of a professional dancer was not for her. Although she continued to teach dance classes at a local community college, she also taught general fitness and weight training classes. Teaching fitness classes was fun but did not present the challenge she had enjoyed while truly engaged in her dance training. In 1992 Carlyn took her first yoga class and was in love with the simplicity and the depth of the practice. Yoga engaged the creativity and the precision of dance without the emphasis on competition that was so prevalent in the dance world. Although the first yoga class she took was a terrific eclectic hatha yoga class, Carlyn went on to study Iyengar yoga with Carol Mitchell in Phoenix. In 1995 Carlyn began to teach yoga.

Carlyn Sikes is currently Faculty Yoga Coordinator and Director of the Yoga Teacher Training Program at Scottsdale Community College. This program was one of the first Yoga training programs offered at the college level in the nation and it is the only college level training in Arizona, where students receive college credit that can be used toward any number of degrees from SCC or any of the four-year universities. Although Carlyn was one of the first twenty certified Anusara Yoga teachers in the country, she now trains extensively in Iyengar yoga with Manouso Manos. Carlyn is the author of SCC's Yoga Teacher Training and Yoga Therapy manuals.