Thinking about moving to Costa Rica and creating a life around your passion? Nancy’s journey began long before yoga became part of Santa Teresa’s identity. Through decades of practice, teaching, and dedication, she built a new life on the Nicoya Peninsula while helping shape the yoga community that continues to grow today.
There’s a certain kind of person who arrives here not just to live – but to listen. To something deeper. A pull that doesn’t always make sense at the time, but proves itself over years of showing up, adapting, and building something meaningful from the ground up.
Nancy is part of that early wave.
She first came to Costa Rica in 1991, visiting her mother who had already begun planting roots in Tamarindo. By 1994, at just 22 years old, she made the move herself – still searching, still figuring things out, but already feeling that quiet certainty that she needed to be here.
Back then, Costa Rica was different. Tamarindo was a small beach town, but even it felt years ahead of what was happening further south. There were no clear paths, no established industries, no roadmap for what a life here could look like. Just opportunity, if you were willing to work for it.
Nancy arrived into that space humbly – living in a loft above her mother’s garage, helping run a small five-room bed and breakfast, cooking for guests in the mornings and slowly carving out her place in a new country. Before long, she opened her own small surf café in town. It was simple, but it worked. Like many who came during those years, she did what was needed – working, creating, adjusting.
Following the Call
But alongside all of that, something else was taking hold.
Yoga had entered her life just a few years earlier, back in California, after a car accident led her to a chiropractor who suggested it for healing. At the time, she resisted. Yoga, in the early ’90s, wasn’t what it is today. It wasn’t trendy. It wasn’t mainstream. If anything, it carried a reputation she wasn’t sure she connected with.
But that changed quickly.
From her first Ashtanga practice, something clicked. What began as a physical recovery turned into something far deeper. She committed fully – practicing four hours a day, diving into the philosophy, reshaping her lifestyle entirely. The connection between body, mind, and something beyond both became undeniable.
And that connection followed her to Costa Rica.
In those early years in Tamarindo, her days were full – running, working, raising her first child, cooking for guests, and maintaining a disciplined yoga practice. There was no clear “career path” in yoga then. It wasn’t something you moved somewhere to teach. It was something you lived.
Teaching came naturally, almost by accident.
Friends began asking her to show them what she was doing. One turned into two, then a small group. At first, she resisted calling herself a teacher. But by the late ’90s, it was clear that something was forming.
Seeking to deepen her understanding, she and her partner traveled to Bali for an intensive two-month teacher training. It was a decision rooted in both practicality and intuition – affordable, immersive, and aligned with the depth she was looking for. The experience expanded her foundation and brought her back to Costa Rica with a clearer sense of direction.
By 1998, Nancy was teaching yoga regularly in Tamarindo – likely one of the first to do so in the area.
At that time, yoga in Costa Rica was still in its infancy. It wasn’t widely understood, and certainly not part of the tourism draw it would later become. But that didn’t matter. The practice continued to grow, quietly and steadily.
From Practice to Purpose
In 2001, Nancy moved to Santa Teresa with her family during the early development of Florablanca. Long before it became a recognized destination, it was an idea taking shape – one that would eventually place yoga at its center.
During the construction years, she taught wherever she could – on decks, in open spaces, in a community that was still forming around her. When Florablanca opened, it became her first official studio, designed with intention and built into the landscape of a place that, at the time, had very little infrastructure for this kind of offering.
From there, things expanded.
Nancy began hosting workshops, inviting international teachers, and connecting Santa Teresa to the wider yoga community. She traveled to San José to teach and train instructors, participated in early yoga festivals, and helped introduce the practice to a broader audience across the country.
But growth also required adaptation.
Her foundation in Ashtanga yoga – structured, disciplined, and traditionally self-led – didn’t always translate to the mix of people arriving at the hotel. Guests were beginners, travelers, curious but unfamiliar. So she evolved her teaching style, learning to guide classes in a way that could meet people where they were, while still holding depth for more advanced practitioners, eventually shifting into a more fluid Vinyasa style.
That ability – to hold both ends of the spectrum – became one of her defining strengths.
Over time, her practice deepened further. Around 2005, she began exploring Tantra Yoga, shifting toward a more embodied approach to yoga – one that focused not on escaping the body, but fully inhabiting it. Through continued study, travel, and mentorship, her teaching expanded beyond physical movement into something more experiential, more intuitive.
After Florablanca was sold in 2008, she continued teaching there for several years before moving into the next chapter: Pranamar.
Set along a quiet stretch of beachfront, Pranamar became another space where yoga, retreat, and community came together. By then, yoga had found its footing in Costa Rica. What had once been unfamiliar was now growing rapidly, drawing people from around the world.
For Nancy, it was a time of expansion – hosting retreats, developing her own teacher training program, and continuing to refine her approach.
Years later, as the region shifted again – through growth, through the pandemic, through waves of change – she stepped into a more personal phase of her work.
Today, she teaches from a more intimate jungle setting, her studio now known as House of Shakti.
The scale is smaller, but the intention is focused.
Here, the work has evolved beyond just yoga classes. Alongside daily practice, Nancy offers breathwork sessions, private teachings, and guided journeys rooted in conscious connected breathing – a modality she has studied deeply over recent years. Her retreats continue internationally, bringing students to places like Italy, Spain, and Portugal, while her teacher training program, developed over a decade, continues to run here in Costa Rica.
But at the core, the essence remains the same.
Her work is about presence.
As Nancy explains, “It’s the art of paying attention and being present… that’s where joy and happiness come from.”
It’s a simple idea – but in practice, it becomes something much deeper. Through years of teaching, she has not only refined her ability to guide a class, but to read people, to meet them where they are, and to offer something that goes beyond movement.
There is a quiet responsibility in that.
To hold space for transformation. To help people reconnect – not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, and in some cases, spiritually. It’s not something she speaks about with grandeur, but it’s felt in the way she teaches, in the consistency of her path, and in the people who continue to return.
Her own journey reflects that same depth.
Years of experience, patience, and dedication have helped Nancy create classes that go beyond movement, offering students a deeper connection to yoga and themselves.
Yoga, for her, has never been just a practice. It’s been a way of understanding life itself – a way of navigating change, challenge, and growth with a sense of awareness and resilience. Over time, that path has led her toward something she describes not in rigid terms, but as a connection to something greater.
A source.
And there is gratitude in that.
Not loud or performative, but steady. Present in the way she speaks about her work, in the way she has chosen to simplify, and in the way she now approaches her teaching – with less focus on scale, and more on authenticity.
What Nancy offers today is not something that can be rushed or replicated. In a time where many teachers move quickly through short certifications, her path has been built over decades – through daily practice, real teaching experience, and continued study with respected teachers around the world. It shows in the way she holds a class, in the way she sees people, and in the depth, she brings to even the simplest movement. Whether you’re stepping onto a mat for the first time or have been practicing for years, Nancy’s classes offer a level of understanding and connection that many don’t even realize is possible – revealing just how much more there is to experience, and asking the question: am I ready for the next level of yoga?
In a community that has seen waves of trends come and go, Nancy has returned to something essential. Less about volume, more about depth. Fewer people, but a stronger connection to those who show up.
And maybe that’s what “living the dream” actually looks like – not a fixed destination, but something that evolves over time. Built slowly. Tested. Refined. Lived.
For Nancy, it started with a feeling. A pull toward a place she didn’t fully understand yet. And through years of practice, work, and commitment, that feeling became something real – not just for herself, but for the community around her.
A life shaped not by chance, but by attention.
And shared with others, one breath at a time.
