Dani Cirignano

Dani Cirignano started practicing yoga in 2003 as a freshman at San Francisco State, mostly because it fulfilled a PE requirement. Something about being back in her body — even in a dim university basement on wrestling mats — stuck with her.

That practice followed her to Thailand, where she spent a year teaching English, deepened her study of yoga asana and philosophy, and was encouraged by her teacher Andrew Rivin to start teaching herself. Back in San Francisco, she trained with Sianna Sherman, Katchie Ananda, and Harvey Deutch, and has been teaching at studios across the city since 2010. Joining Lotusland feels like a natural homecoming — a studio where the practice doesn't stop at the mat's edge, and where the connection between inner work and how we show up in the world is taken seriously.

Dani's approach is cross-disciplinary by nature — shaped by a lifetime as a dancer and over a decade of serious weightlifting, by deep study of Buddhist dharma and meditation, her work as a certified Integral coach, and her ongoing training in the practice of yoga. She cares about how bodies actually move: assessing alignment, mobilizing what's stuck, building real strength, and improving the mechanics that make everything else possible. Her classes are rooted in breath and vinyasa, informed by therapeutic principles, and held with the kind of presence that comes from someone who has done a lot of her own work.

Outside the studio, Dani runs Self Made, her Integral coaching practice for people designing unconventional lives. She loves heavy lifts, epic travel, and long hours meandering around the city with her dog, Tater. She is deeply grateful to all her wonderful students and teachers.