For the body to be healthy it needs to move. For the mind to be healthy, it needs to still.
Yoga for your next chapter.
Deborah Kurilla, Certified Yoga & Meditation Instructor
Deb Kurilla is the founder of Body of Light Yoga School, where she has been teaching yoga and meditation since 2000. Her journey began in 1992 while managing a busy New York City bookstore. Living a full, hectic lifestyle and anxious by nature, she discovered meditation by accident—and quickly realized she had found something she needed. Meditation was profoundly transformative. It introduced her to “stillness”, a concept foreign to her.
Yoga became a natural companion to meditation. Moving the body in all the different shapes focused her mind, released daily stress, brought a deeper sense of calm and just felt good. Over time, yoga’s philosophy offered Deb a compassionate lens through which to understand herself, others, and life as a whole.
Deborah opened her studio Body of Light in Millburn, New Jersey in 2000, where she taught for 10 years and worked with hundreds of students of all ages and abilities. The studio was recognized by New Jersey Life Magazine as one of the Top Five Yoga Studios in New Jersey in 2005.
Her teaching gradually expanded to include training future yoga teachers, chair yoga, therapeutic yoga, balance training, inspired in part by her most senior students, 80 and 90 year olds she taught at Winchester Garden, an independant living community. Deb developed the course Balanced for Life, integrating yoga, strength, coordination, agility and balance practices designed to help students move with confidence and ease.
Deb’s teaching is informed by her studies in yoga therapy, meditation, Pilates, Hanna Somatics, Adaptive Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Thai Bodywork, breathwork, and balance training. These diverse modalities enrich her approach and support her belief that yoga is a lifelong practice that can evolve with us at every stage of life.
Today Deb continues to guide students with movement, meditation, and awareness practices, mentoring them to move with wisdom and grace as they enter their next chapter.
Continuing education
Deb remains student herself. Her studies include 18 certifications. She has taught over students of all ages, shapes and life styles over 25,000 hours. She is an Experienced - Registered Yoga Teacher with the Yoga Alliance as well as a Registered Yoga Therapist with the International Association of Yoga Teachers.
She has gone on retreats multiple times a year since 1994 with her spiritual teacher Mata Amritanandaymayi or simply known as Amma, the Hugging Saint. Retreats are an adult version of a time out and that nourishes the mind, heart, body and perspective. Going to her teacher’s ashram in Kerala, India for an extended stay at least once a year has been woven into her schedule since 2022.
More to know about Deborah
I have a BA in French and I lived in Montpellier, France for a year. An explorer at heart, I have traveled extensively in the US and beyond, developing an appreciation for different terrain, cultures and foods.
I spent 16 years as a retail manager focusing on restructuring entrepreneurial companies who were ready to expand into a larger business phase.
I am a 4th generation entrepreneur following in the footsteps of my great-grandmother, maternal grandparents, and my father and mother.
I am the oldest of 6 children and raised in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
