Our Team
Bree Dillon Founder & Chief Motivator
With over 20 years of yoga studies and teaching, Bree started Motive to explore how the principles of yoga can fuel our biggest and smallest endeavors. Her practical approach to teaching empowers her students with functional and relevant movement and mindfulness tools. Her classes makes sense in your body based on how it is designed and challenge your physical and mental limitations so you feel better when you leave than when you came.
E-RYT 500 Yoga Medicine
RYT 200 Julia McCabe
Former owner of Motive, Seattle
Contact: bree@motiveyogaco.com
Gwen Vernon Studio Manager
With over 20 years of personal practice, Gwen started teaching yoga in 2020. She uses yoga to center her mind and bring inward focus to her extroverted life. Both her teaching and personal practice focus on breath (pranayama), core, alignment, and mind-body awareness. Gwen's preferred styles are Anusara, Forrest Yoga, and Hatha Flow. She teaches both livestream and in-person.
RYT 200 8 Limbs Yoga, Seattle WA 2020
Influential teachers include Gianna Carotenuto, Fran Gallo, Anne Phyfe-Palmer
Contact: info@motiveyogaco.com
Stacey Williams Lead Teacher
Steeped in 25 + years of yoga, Stacey is our senior teacher. Her primary path of study had been in the Iyengar tradition of alignment-based yoga. She has gratefully used yoga to heal from injuries and challenges over the years and she guides students into alignment-based postures informed by her studies of Iyengar, Anusara, Ashtanga, Restorative, and Vinyasa.
E-RYT 200
Former co-owner of 8 Petals Yoga Studio, Bellingham WA
Contact: stacey@motiveyogaco.com
Kellie Moore Natural Healer
Kellie, a teacher and naturopathic doctor, is passionate about yoga for its health benefits. It’s preventative, sustainable, and healing for body, mind, and heart. She has teaching experience with diverse styles of yoga, ranging from vigorous vinyasa flows aimed at promoting sweat, cardiovascular fitness and strength, to yin sequences focused on joint health or restorative poses addressing specific conditions. She enjoys sharing these practices as a therapeutic tool to promote health and prevent and treat disease.
RYT 200 Open Up! Yoga 2017
RYT 40 Level 1: Foundations, Yogafit 2010
RYT 20 Restorative, Twist Yoga 2018
Jay Neal Sensory Guide
Jay's approach to yoga is about turning your attention to your body to sense deeply and intelligently into your experience. Yoga postures provide a reliable vehicle to carry us into the depths of our truest nature, and when combined with the awareness of breath, they deliver us to the vast, luminous, and ecstatic interiority of our being. Yes, really. His yoga is about breath, exploring range of motion, weight bearing and balance, as well as sensing into deeper physical and subtle structures using simple, basic postures.
RYT 200 Seattle Yoga Arts 2015
Teaching lineage: Anusara & Viniyoga
Dana Golden Subtle Power Yogi
Dana loves all kinds of movement, and started practicing yoga after a college rowing career. She fell in love with the space to explore more physical subtlety (and not just push through challenge!) She also noticed the benefits of a regular mindfulness practice and self inquiry in all areas of her life. She took teacher training at Be Luminous Yoga in Seattle, and currently teaches corporate classes, studio classes, and a yoga for Parkinson’s class. She enjoys trails, cold water, huckleberries, and working on climate action.
RYT 200 Be Luminous Yoga, Seattle
Specialties: Yoga for Parkinson's, Power Vinyasa
Ashleigh McIntyre Soulful Sage
The first time she stepped onto her mat in 2011, Ashleigh instantly felt a sense of coming home to her body. She felt called to deepen her practice and the knowledge of yoga and began a 6 month training. Ashleigh started teaching in 2012. She truly believes in the healing possibilities through the practices of yoga. In Ashleigh’s classes, you can expect to flow through an intentional playlist. She emphasizes the importance of moving the body with the rhythm of your breath and encourages fluid movement. She asks that you honor your body in your practice, and that you try to stay present in order to savor the moment that you have carved out for yourself on your mat. Her classes always end in a lengthy savasana and with a hands-on adjustment with oil blends she has made herself.
200 hr Register Yoga Teacher Training, 2012
Breathwork Teacher Training, David Elliot, Present Day
Sofia Christensen Aloe Vera
For Sofia, yoga has been the foundation of her well-being for as long as she can remember. This beautiful practice has been the vehicle through which she found clarity of mind, support of the body, and soothing of the spirit. Her passion for the practice led her to feel called to teach, and share the healing benefits it has to offer with others. With a heart-centered approach and an overall message of wholeness, Sofia sees the spiritual practice as an invitation to return to the heart – a path for coming home to our true nature. She is so grateful and honored to share this all encompassing and holistic approach to wellness, in community with you.
RYT 200, Awake Heart with Hannah Muse, Santa Cruz CA
Sharea Holcomb Sound Healer
Sharea is a passionate Bhakti yogini, instructor, ceremonialist and sound healer. The path of yoga changed her life, and she is devoted to helping others find the tools and practices to change theirs. It is her joy and privilege to share these teachings with others through offering yoga, meditation and regenerative sound journeys. She also loves offering sweet chants, songs and sounds after each class. Her slow flow classes are nourishing for your nervous system and spirit. She sees yoga as a powerful medicine for healing trauma stored in the body and acts as a bridge connecting people back to themselves, their bodies, and the earth while inviting internal exploration and transformation.
RYT 200 Kula Collective, Guatemala 2021,
100-hour Sound Healing and Ceremony Facilitator, Sound Ceremony, Guatemala 2021
100-hour Therapeutic Ayurveda Yoga Specialist, Swastha Yoga International, 2022
200-hour Historical Trauma Recovery and Somatic Archaeology©️ training 2023
Jen Gode Subbing Extraordinaire
A native of Washington State, Jen grew up running, swimming, biking, playing soccer... There was always a hill, or a mountain to climb and ski... with a dog, of course! One day (over 20 years ago) a wise friend, recognizing Jen's need to balance her active lifestyle with stillness and flexibility, took her to a yoga class. Jen's goal (on and off the mat) is to share the healthy benefits of a yoga practice with others, that they may find a happy balance in their lives.
RYT 200, Melina Meza and 8 Limbs Yoga (Seattle), 2014
Crystal Elliot Musical Mover
Crystal is grateful for the opportunity to bring her 20 years of yoga experience to the Motive Yoga community. She enjoys sharing the spiritual and physical benefits of vinyasa yoga with her students, emphasizing mind-body-breath connection and proper pose alignment. Continually moved by the ability of this practice to both inspire and challenge, Crystal believes yoga can unlock our potential to be our own best teachers, both on and off the mat.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
You were born with exactly what you need
to successfully navigate your life, mountains and all.
Motive is here to help you access your own potential thru:
<< AWARENESS >>
Some say information is power. We say awareness is. We’ll show you how to maximize your potential, physical and mental, through awareness.
<< ADVENTURE >>
A sense of adventure keeps us open-minded and always learning. If we can laugh, explore and stay curious on and off the mat, we’ll never stagnate.
<< PURPOSE >>
The satisfaction of all endeavors is amplified when we have a deep and clear sense of meaning. We seek purpose in our practice and in our play.
Why “Motive”?
1.
(noun) a reason for doing something, especially one that is hidden or not obvious
2.
(adjective) producing physical or mechanical motion
3.
(adjective) causing or being the reason for something
We are a community that moves and breathes with purpose!
