David Schlussel

Albany, United States

5

20 reviews

Contacts

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Telephone:
+1 510-301-0747
Website:
www.yogilifecoach.com
Address:
Albany, CA 94706
Nearby public transportation stops & stations:
0.4 miSolano & Santa Fe
0.5 miGillman St & Cornell Av
0.5 miSolano & Curtis
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Today

Today –
Local time (Albany) 08:29 Sunday, 1 June 2025

Business hours

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Tuesday –
Wednesday –
Thursday –
Friday –
Saturday –
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Description

Specialties

I specialize in helping my clients FEEL GOOD in their bodies & their lives, through supportive planning for the future, and relieving them from accumulated physical, mental and emotional baggage through a combination of yoga asana, reflective inquiry, and somatic transformational exercises. I do this in several settings:

— The Open Here transformational yoga programs — both drop in classes and retreats

— Private life coaching and yoga sessions

— Public yoga classes:

W, F 8:30 — 9:30am at Yoga Kula

Tues 9:00 — 10:30am at 7th Heaven (level 2)

W, F 12−1pm at 7th Heaven

History

Established in 2002.

I began teaching public yoga classes in 2002 and got interested in the deeper transformation that yoga had to offer. This transformational interest led me to group processing work through my men’s circle and through the Arête Experience. I was thrilled with the Arête coaches’ expertise and opening people up to their higher self — the real aim of yoga — and trained with them as a life coach and transformational course leader.

From there I began helping people not only through transforming their relationship to their bodies, but also their relationship to their life both through coaching people privately, then a retreat, then some 6 week committed group series, and now also through drop in yoga and circling sessions.

Meet the Business Owner

David S.

Business Owner

David Schlussel is a yoga teacher, life coach, husband, and father. David coaches his clients from fixed ideas about what they can and can’t do, towards life as a playful exploration of possibility.

David learned the benefit of regular consistent practice with Ashtanga. discovered the deeper strengths available through activating along the muscular and energetic pathways of the body, and developed his passion for yoga philosophy by studying Dynamic Yoga. He is currently inspired by Anusara Yoga, which has infused his practice and teaching with an empowering understanding of alignment, therapeutics, and fun.

David’s classes are a flowing celebration of our bodies, designed to exercise, educate, integrate, delight, challenge and recharge. He is known for his warm approachability, contagious curiosity, gentle and liberating hands on adjustments, facilitating healing of old injuries, and offering concepts that support his clients both on the mat and in their daily life.

David Schlussel also recommends

Namaste Berkeley

89

reviews

Yoga

David S. says,

«It’s a great yoga studio where I teach. Many fantastic teachers and events, reasonable prices.»

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20 reviews of David Schlussel

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Place rating: 5
FPO, AP
How does a Yoga teacher read all these gushing reviews, and not start getting sucked into a conversation with the ego?
If yoga for you is about mindfulness, then David is a great way to get some refreshing perspective, and a gentle push from directions you wouldn’t expect. My favorite yoga teacher!
Place rating: 5
Oakland, CA
I have been taking David’s yoga classes for years! He is always bringing what he learns into the class, which makes for an evolving learning environment. One of the kindest, most positive spirits I’ve encountered in a yoga studio, David has helped me deepen my personal practice in ways that words can not adequately describe. He knowledge of anatomy and alignment come from astute observation, study and personal practice. His class makes it safe to go to your edge and deepen your practice on so many levels!
Place rating: 5
San Francisco, CA
I just wanted to take a moment let you know how much i appreciate your gift as a yoga teacher.
I find your invitation to come to the edge without going over the exact amount of encouragement and acceptance that has allowed my practice to deepen and blossom over the last year. And, as you know, when one’s practice deepens… so does one’s life (and mine has!)
Your knowledge and expertise of the physical body support me in feeling safe. And trust that those around me are safe too.
And finally, your eloquence with the dharma of yoga support me in making my practice and act of prayer.
Thank you for your devotion to your work in the world… you’re really good at it. :-)
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
David is a wonderful yoga teacher. He manages to be very specific about alignment and healthy poses while also bringing in the broader picture of how the mind and body can work together to improve one’s life. His is the one yoga class I will get myself to. I’ve also taken private classes, which fixed a shoulder problem I’d had for about a year. He’s great for all levels. He manages his classes so that newbies and experienced people alike get a great yoga session.
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
I’ve worked with David as a yoga teacher and yoga/​life coach, and recommend him enthusiastically!
I’ve relied for many years on yoga to center and ground me. David’s powerful, intuitive coaching helps get to the core of yoga postures and the underlying emotional issues they connect to. I felt I did layers and layers of healing working with his help, improving my yoga, but more importantly aligning my goals and emotions within my yoga practice.
David is always «right there» with where you need to go. I’m very grateful for the excellent insights, compassion, humor, and wisdom he brings to working with students.
Place rating: 5
Richmond, CA
I hired David as a coach and found it very helpful. I was at a major decision point in my life and David helped me get clear and move towards a life more in alignment with my highest purpose. It’s been a few months since I worked with him and the wisdom, advice, and clarity he offered have stayed with me. I feel happy about where I am and my business is thriving. David’s coaching was a key element in getting me here.
I’ve worked with a few other coaches at times in my life. From the first session with David, I felt that he understood me and I felt better about myself and empowered to move forward. When I came to him feeling stuck, he always found creative ways to move through and beyond with yoga practices, movement and surprises. He balanced this with practical ideas and advice that worked.
David is also an inspiring man and a role model himself. I know many coaches and therapists, etc who may give good advice but their personal life is a mess. David practices what he preaches.
I highly recommend David as a coach. (and his yoga classes are great too)
Place rating: 5
Oakland, CA
I’m so grateful to know David. My overall health and well being has greatly improved since I’ve started taking his classes. He has incredible knowledge of the body, giving great instruction on alignment and breathing. David also brings wonderful insight to each class. I always walk away with a new perspective on my life, emotions, and ways of the physical body. David’s guidance really helps me to get out of my head and into my body, which means more peace and connection to my feelings.
David is by far my favorite yoga teacher and I highly recommend him to anyone looking to bring yoga into their wellness practice.
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
I took an intro to yoga workshop and with it came a week of free lessons. I happened in on one of David’s classes and I intend to go back at least once a week. He was very open and welcoming to this newbie. He manner is gentle while encouraging always reminding us to be comfortable and to communicate with your body. All levels are welcomed in his class.
Place rating: 5
San Francisco, CA
I went to see David for 1:1 yoga sessions to help heal a herniated disk in my back. I’ve had the injury for almost 10 years and I’ve tried everything from acupuncture to western medicine. After several months of sessions with David, I can say that my back feels better than ever and the yoga sessions have been the most effective treatment that I’ve found for healing my injury. In addition to being effective, David is enjoyable to work with and provides supportive but challenging guidance that helps me continue to expand and grow my yoga practice. And his rates are very reasonable. Go see him :)
Place rating: 5
Oakland, CA
Every thoughtful word David utters speaks directly to my heart. He has an incredible gift of gently nudging old thought patterns off of their track and replacing them with possibility, self-​acceptance, hope, love, and tenderness. I suffer from the common condition of believing that I need to be perfect, I need to do more, and despite evidence to the contrary, I’m not quite good enough as I am. I came to Yoga to help heal that. From my very first class with David, he was able to connect my stuck and limiting thought patterns with complimentary asana, to show me how to open my body, my mind, and my heart. His vast knowledge of anatomy allows him to instruct me in subtle changes in my poses so that I can go from clenching and straining to deep unfolding, and lengthening.
I also take private sessions with David. This work has been the most transformative. With his guidance and direction, I have been able to recover from a complex mystery illness (where the ONLY time I felt at peace in my body and mind was during our session), I have gained awareness of my destructive patterns and feel more able to make loving and healthy choices for myself, I have been able to visualize and articulate what I want my life to look like in the future, I have been able to look at my self with less judgement and criticism, and most importantly, I have began to cultivate REAL love for myself. I feel so grateful and fortunate to have David to help me along this path. Just like I would never be able to trust someone who had never had a weight problem to assist me in losing weight, I would never turn to someone to coach me in changing my life’s patterns who only knew in theory what it is like to struggle, and strive for change. David LIVES the principals he teaches. He has experienced great tragedy and pain, and through his willingness to be vulnerable and honest, he has developed a powerful voice, a vibrant practice, and delivers (to those lucky enough to hear it) a message of «yes, you can!»
If you are stuck in a life that doesn’t bring you joy, if you want to deepen your Yoga practice, and deepen your life experience, if you want your life to reflect the love you have for yourself. Go see David. Let the healing begin.
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
David is an excellent yoga instructor and private yoga coach. I’ve done many styles of yoga for many years and while I almost always enjoy class (it is yoga after all!) there aren’t that many teachers that make me want to get in there specifically to work with them. David gives a great (and very balanced class) with expert focus on alignment/​body position, some philosophy or introspection for those that want it, and a sort of sneaky physical intensity. I’ve learned much from him and would recommend his classes/​sessions for beginner and advanced students alike.
Place rating: 5
Orinda, CA
I have taken classes with at least a hundred yoga teachers over the past twenty-​two years, both in the USA and India, and I have to rank David as near the top in terms of teachers that I have gotten positive value from taking classes with.
David is of course skilled at normal yoga teacher things like making adjustments, designing a class flow, and at modeling the poses. But the two skills that he really excels at are: (1) bringing his life-​coaching background into class, which means bringing enthusiasm, a bigger perspective, emotional health practices, and a facility in translating the benefits of yoga back into daily life, and (2) a precise master-​level knowledge of anatomy, which helps him know intuitively which yoga poses can help, in what way, to address student’s specific somatic issues.
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
I’ve been going to David’s classes consistently for almost a year now and he is amazing! He is sensitive to injuries and always has practical suggestions to work through whatever is happening in your body at the time. At the same time, his classes are challenging and fresh, incorporating typical asanas of an anusara class with other more playful and crazy shapes. Though, to be clear, his classes are not about getting into shapes, but about feeling good in your body and examining our relationship to challenge. David encourages our yoga practice to foster complete physical and emotional bliss in our lives and who doesn’t need that?!
Place rating: 5
Woodinville, WA
Dear David,
Some reflection since October 2008… Open Here changed my whole life. It was there and with your coaching, that I set forth into action a chain of events that have lead me to now. NOW being; living and experiencing the goals I set back in 2008. This realization of my life goals have been so rewarding. It is extremely powerful to discover that I can fulfill my dreams, no matter how intimidating the journey. So, thank you!
As of now I’ve got 4 continents and 2 hemispheres under my belt: 13 countries and counting!
PS… but i do miss your yoga classes!
Place rating: 5
San Francisco, CA
David is an absolutely amazing yoga teacher and a wonderful human being. I’ve been taking private yoga lessons with him and the experience has been consistently beyond my hopes and expectations. David was able to help me understand some of the more nuanced aspects of alignment so that I could get more out of my yoga practice. I like his supportive yet gently challenging attitude, combined with a sense of humor and lightness– just what I need. This fellow has a lot of valuable understanding of yoga to share.
Place rating: 5
Crockett, CA
I wanted to get back into a regular yoga practice after a couple of years off of only sporadically taking classes. The first class I tried at Seventh Heaven was David’s noon class. After one class with him, I knew that I had found gold. David’s positivity and easy-​going style has inspired me to continue. I never want to miss one of David’s classes. My husband and I recently took a private yoga lesson, and my husband commented that it was like taking 10 group lessons. His love for what he does shines through everything and I am glad that I found him so quickly.
Place rating: 5
San Francisco, CA
I still remember the first yoga class I went to with David. It was the first class I’d been to in 2010 and David did so well at bringing in the new year through our practice that day. Yoga is much more to me than physical stretching and David does so well at weaving in the metaphors of our physical practice to the day-​to-​day experience of our lives. His gentle manner of teaching and guiding are a reminder for how to live. Thank you for bringing so much to your yoga practice.
Place rating: 5
Berkeley, CA
I didn’t really want to go to yoga class today, I was feeling lazy, but I dragged myself into David’s class and once again left inspired!
My background of yoga is that I have attended classes pretty consistently once or twice per week or the past 10 years (beginner and intermediate) both in the UK and California.
I have been going to David’s classes weekly for the past 2 and a half years since I found him, because he brings incredible knowledge, passion and creativity to his yoga classes. He doesn’t just lead me through a series of asanas (which I know has value, but for me is often too repetitive and boring) but he really has a way of helping me to sense each muscle and how it can release and/​or strengthen itself gracefully into a posture.
I left class today WALKING DIFFERENTLY. It corrected my posture and aligned my hips. Incredible.
Place rating: 5
Petaluma, CA
There are ENDLESS WONDERFUL THINGS TO SAY ABOUT DAVID and his teaching style!
I adore his tues/​thurs 9am class. One of the things I love most about yoga is that you don’t have to be in any particular state or condition to practice. You come as you are, and work with your body (all points that David expresses throughout class!). David inspires you to approach your edge with full awareness and connection to what you are TRULY feeling and then to mindfully go beyond that point. Through subtle and perfect adjustments, you learn how to move, extend, and stretch the way you were meant to.
His instruction exposes/​identifies your approach and way of being in the world. Issues I have in my life come up during my time with David, and I am able to face them, get to the root and go through «the pain to get to the pleasure» (as David says in class). I take those lessons learned in his class out into my everyday life.
I feel more in touch with body from my classes with David. I don’t really want to take classes with anyone else, but I feel that if I were to do so, I would be able to get the most out of my asana practice as a result of David’s profound instruction.
He challenges and pushes you to go beyond what you think you are capable of doing. You find out things about yourself that you have been ignoring for years! You find out where you have been storing and harboring pain in your body, and he helps you begin to let go.
Thank you so much David!
A couple of great quotes from his class:
«this is what it feels like to be afraid when you are truly safe»
«whether you tell yourself you can or you can’t, you’re right»
Place rating: 5
Sebastopol, CA
I am so glad that I get to write a testimonial about David’s life-​enhancing, bliss-​expanding, strength-​building, soul-​opening yoga classes. I started attending class with him on my birthday, when he gently and lovingly guided me into meeting — and then exploring beyond — a particular physical edge. That experience, one of *possibility* around what my body could do and be, was the greatest birthday present ever. It is a gift that David gives every time he teaches a yoga class: deep wisdom about, and joyful faith in, the capacity of human beings to grow, expand, release what is no longer serving.
In the few short months that I have practiced yoga with him I have noticed a marked increase in my strength and flexibility; I also have noticed myself applying insights I’ve heard him share to different situations in my life, with great benefit. David is an amazing teacher! Don’t miss the chance to learn from or work with him.