About Genie




Follow Genie on her journey through India -- click here for pictures


It was 1950. I was 3 years of age, and my mother, Misako Shintani-Nakano, was being taken away in an ambulance. The doctors didn’t know why, but she was dying. She had Lupus, an autoimmune disease new to the medical field in the 50’s. She was hospitalized for a year and injected with cortisone daily. Her face ballooned, she grew a beard, and her voice lowered a few octaves. Two years later, my father contracted Tuberculosis, a disease that killed two of his sisters. Dad was also hospitalized for a year.

When everyone stopped being sick, my mother took life into her own hands by learning Yoga. When I was 7 years old, I remember going to the Yogananda Self Realization Temple in Hollywood, CA, to watch movies on Yogis in India and take Yoga classes with Mom. She practiced Yoga every day and lived a healthy, full, and robust life until the age of 82.

Misako, or Mom, was my first and foremost Yoga guru. As a dancer, I used the Yoga stretches I learned from Mom to warm-up and get ready. I also used Yoga to unwind after the performance high. And after several dance injuries and major life transitions, I turned to Yoga as a way of life. I traveled as far as India seeking the wisdom of masters in Yoga and meditation. I consider Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, the Los Angeles Buddhist Dharma Vihara, and Shasta Zen Buddhist Monastery of California to be my greatest sources of meditative and spiritual guidance. After many years of intensive spiritual study and practice, I acquired a passion for teaching and spreading Yoga to everyone.

In 1986, I began teaching Yoga to Gardena Community Adult School. It was taught under the guise of Physical Fitness for Adults. Then in the late 90‘s, with a committee of teachers, I wrote an official course outline for Yoga. This made Yoga “legal,” and it is now being offered throughout the LA County Adult Education Division.

I am speechless when it comes to expressing the joy and passion I feel for teaching Yoga. This December I studied yoga with Guru Kannon in Chennai, India. In India, Yoga is approached drastically differently than in the USA. Self-awareness and spirituality are emphasized. My guru expressed complete dismay over the way Yoga has become a form of fitness/aerobics in the West. According to Kannon, Yoga has been commercialized.

My goal is to keep the true intention of Yoga alive and well in our adult education classes and all the future Yoga classes that I teach within my present lifetime.

And by the way, I’m still dancing and performing. All due to the miraculous benefits of Yoga.

Visit my website on Belly Dance and Bollywood Dancing by clicking here.