Zoë Slatoff

Zoë is the Clinical Professor of Sanskrit at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she teaches Sanskrit and Yoga Philosophy in the Yoga Studies M.A. program. She also teaches online courses for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Religion and Philosophy from Lancaster University and an M.A. in Asian Languages and Culture from Columbia University.

Zoë is the author of Yogāvatāraṇam, a Sanskrit textbook for yoga students, which uses extracts from classical yoga texts to integrate traditional and academic methods of learning the language. Zoë is also the Sanskrit editor for Pushpam, and has done Sanskrit editing for Nāmarūpa and Robert Svoboda's book Vāstu.

Zoë also taught for many years at her yoga shala in NYC, Ashtanga Yoga Upper West Side. She discovered yoga at the age of 15 and has been devoted to a daily practice ever since. She first traveled to Mysore in 2000 to study with Pattabhi Jois and Sharath and has returned almost annually. She is honored to have received Guruji's blessing to teach in 2002, and level 2 Authorization in 2009.

Her Ph.D. dissertation centers around a translation of the Aparokṣānubhūti, an Advaita Vedānta text attributed to Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, which is particularly relevant to yoga practitioners. It explains how we get caught up in illusions about our bodies and the world and how we could instead use practice to help us discover and be more connected to our essential nature.