Our Teachers
Stephen Parker Psy.D. specializes in counseling psychology and serves on the teaching faculties of several Universities in Minneapolis-St. Paul area. He studied Sanskrit at University of Minnesota under Swami Veda. Dr. Parker has been a teacher of yoga and meditation for over 30 years and is a grandparented Registered Yoga Teacher at the 500 hour level of the Yoga Alliance. A member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, he serves on the faculties of the Meditation Center in Minneapolis and the Sadhanamandir and Sadhaka Gram ashrams in Rishikesh, India. He is also a senior faculty member of the International Himalayan Yoga Teachers’ Association. He has lectured on yoga, meditation and spiritual practice throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as in Carribean countries, Holland, South Africa, Korea, Hong Kong and India. In 2004 he helped originate and teach the first course on yoga in an American medical school at the University of Minnesota Academic Medical Center. He is a Sanskrit scholar, and has been the chief editor of Swami Veda’s commentaries on Yoga Sutras.
Dr. Parker was initiated in the Himalayan Tradition in 1971 by Swami Veda Bharati (formerly Dr. Usharbudh Arya), and was given the initiate name Stoma. He served for a year in the ashram at the Meditation Center in Minneapolis, MN. He is among the first teachers certified by the Himalayan International Teachers’ Association H.I.T.A., and he began teaching hatha-yoga in 1974.
