Juko Holiday, Ph.D.

I have taught yoga and meditation to students at USC, Brown University, Facebook, Google, and have developed mindfulness content for both community and corporate wellness programs.

​I completed 500 hours of yoga teacher training with Mark Stephens and founded Ease Mountain Yoga in 2015. For over a decade I taught in-person classes and intensives, trained groups of heart-centered yoga therapists and teachers, and welcomed thousands of students home to their mats until closing the dedicated physical studio in 2025 and pivoting to provide support for people looking for depth beyond fitness in their yoga practice. 

I currently guide the Fire Practice Sangha, a Buddhist-inspired virtual meditation community, which has been meeting every week since March of  2020.

My doctorate is in psychology and I trained as a psychotherapist at Women’s Clinic in Los Angeles. YBSA (Yoga-Based Self-Awareness) is a  framework I developed that expands on mind-body modalities to help clinicians, yoga therapists, and other caring professionals offer therapeutic presence to their clients, patients, and students. You can read more about my current work as a therapist at jukoholiday.com.

I have called myself Buddhist since the mid-1990s, drawn to meditation by a genuine need for relief from years of living with chronic illness. In 2009 I took Jukai and received Bodhisattva ordination in the Soto Zen tradition. My meditation teaching is also deeply influenced by training with Camille Maurine and Dr. Lorin Roche and the Radiance Sutras, his interpretation of the Vijñana Bhairava Tantra as living, embodied practice invitations.

The Medicine of Presence

Reflections on the places where life and practice meet
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 Idam Na Mama:
​This Is Not Mine
Naming My Teachers & Lineages of Wisdom

I first encountered yoga as a child in the 1970s, following along with Lilias Folan on her PBS series Lilias, Yoga and You. What she shared inspired me to round up friends to "play yoga" at recess. Those early experiences led to a practice that has ebbed, flowed, and endured for over four decades.
Brief and prolonged, formal and informal, and across varied disciplines, contexts, and relationships - each of these people planted or nurtured a seed of understanding and illumination that forms part of an inner garden of resilience and hope that sustains and encourages me. 

Anything I have to offer others is informed by what I have learned and observed from them, it is not mine - ​idam na mama. 

Michael L. Johnson, Arzlene Johnson, Helen Brooks, Wanda Johnson, Lilias Folan, Victor Young, Greg & Mary Shooner, Lowry Marshall, Dr. John Emigh, the Akanke line of the Iota Alpha chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, DJ Johnson, Caleb Asch, Dr. Marina Bhumitra, Al Mancini, Emily Van Horn, Jerry Erdmann, Dr. Sarah Winter, Carla Becker, Dr. Edward Teyber, Ann-Marie Sayers, Dr. Ismana Carney, Dr. Judy Schavrien, Dr. Ana Perez-Chisti, Rev. Jundo Cohen, Rev. Taigu Turlur, Dan & Karla DeLong, Joshua Steinfeldt, Mark Stephens,  Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, Karla Helbert, Dr.Judith Lasater, Thomas Chow, Dr. Pat Katsky, Camille Maurine, Dr. Lorin Roche, Indu Arora, and all of the students who trust me to witness and guide their practice.