Meet the Collective

Betsy Nagy is the founder of Mindful Leaps Wellness and a co-creator of the Dahlonega Yoga Collective, developed in partnership with Emily Cook and Legacies Peace Center. Through yoga, counseling, and holistic wellness practices, Betsy helps others cultivate greater balance, self-awareness, and connection—within themselves and in the ways they move through the world.

Betsy’s path to wellness has unfolded across many chapters. After earning a bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University and a master’s degree in business administration, she built a successful career in corporate finance spanning more than 25 years. Her direction began to change after she enrolled in a psychology class—one class that sparked a deeper curiosity about people, healing, and the many experiences that shape our lives. That curiosity eventually led her to earn a second master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Florida International University and become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor.

Her exploration of whole-person wellness continued when she discovered yoga. What began as a physical practice soon became something much more meaningful: a way to understand the connection among mind, body, and spirit. Through teacher training, Betsy came to appreciate that yoga reaches far beyond asana, offering practical tools for meeting life with greater presence, compassion, and acceptance.

Betsy is an E-RYT 500 with Yoga Alliance and a certified Yoga Therapist and Ayurveda Wellness Coach. Her continued studies have also included Reiki energy healing and Pilates teacher training. Drawing from these complementary disciplines—as well as her experience in counseling, business, and life—she brings an integrative and deeply human approach to her teaching.

Betsy’s classes are welcoming, accessible, and grounded in the belief that wellness does not require us to become someone different. Instead, it begins with acknowledging and respecting who we are, listening to what our bodies and lives are telling us, and creating space for greater ease and balance. Her teaching weaves together mindful movement, breath awareness, reflection, and gentle encouragement, inviting each student to honor their own needs and experience.

Emily has been teaching yoga since 2013, when she completed her 200-hour teacher training with Lifted Heart Yoga under the guidance of Cybele Steen and Tami Roberts. After years of practicing YogaFit and BodyFlow, her teacher training introduced her to a deeper experience of traditional yoga and what she came to understand as its capacity for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.

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Over the past 13 years, Emily has taught in yoga studios, universities, community settings, and private practice, both in person and online. Her teaching includes Hatha, Vinyasa Flow, Restorative, and Yin yoga, though she is especially drawn to practices that create space for intentional movement deep rest, reflection, and reconnection.

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Emily's approach to yoga is shaped by her background in social work, conflict management, peacebuilding, and education. She views yoga as much more than a physical practice: it can be a pathway toward greater self-awareness, emotional healing, mental clarity, and spiritual connection. Her classes are thoughtfully designed around an intention, or sankalpa, often weaving together asana, pranayama, meditation, reflection, and carefully curated music. Depending on the practice, students may experience both challenege and stillness, but Emily's goal remains the same: to create an accessibly space where students can listen to their bodies, move beyond limiting beliefs, reconnect with themselves, and carry something meaningful from the mat into their everyday lives.

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As Co-Founder and Executive Director of Legacies Peace Center, Emily is the visionary behind the orgainzation's interconnected approach to peacebuilding, wellness, community foodways, and transformative leadership. She developed Sacred Ground Wellness: Embodied Peace Collective from the belief that sustainable peacebuilding must include the inner work of individual healing and well-being. The Dahlonega Yoga Collective, developed in partnership with Mindful Leaps, brings that philosophy into practice by creating accessible opportunities for people to move, breathe, rest, and connect in community.

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Emily currently teaches with the Dahlonega Yoga Collective, including its monthly Full Moon Yoga gatherings, where she combines intentional movement, breathwork, reflection, music, and ritual to create opportunities for community connection and renewal. For Emily, these shared practices embody what she values most about yoga: the possibility of cultivating peace within ourselves in ways that ultimately shape how we show up for one another beyond the mat.

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Learn more about Emily's work as Executive Director and Co-Founder of Legacies Peace Center here.

Sophie Blackstone's yoga journey began in 2013 after yoga was recommended to help manage severe scoliosis. She vividly remembers arriving at her first class feeling frustrated and discouraged, then leaving an hour later with an unexpected sense of peace. That experience became the beginning of a lifelong exploration of yoga's ability to transform both the body and mind.

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Encouraged by her parents to deepen her personal practice, Sophie traveled to Rishikesh, India, in 2016 to complete her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at the Association of Yoga and Meditation (AYM). She returned the following year to earn her 300-hour certification, completing over 500 hours of study in Hatha Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Pranayama, Meditation, Shatkarma, Yoga Philosophy, Kundalini, Yoga Therapy, and Mantra.

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Since beginning her teaching journey in 2016, Sophie has shared yoga in community studios, parks, universities, and wellness spaces across the country. Before joining the Dahlonega Yoga Collective, she taught in Rapid City, South Dakota, as well as at Canopy + the Roots after returning to Georgia.

Sophie's classes are thoughtfully designed for beginners and anyone seeking a slower, more mindful approach to yoga. She emphasizes simple, accessible movement, breath awareness, and creating space to reconnect with the body while quieting the constant activity of the mind. Her philosophy centers on the belief that yoga offers an opportunity to gently untangle the physical and mental knots we all carry, creating greater clarity, ease, and connection. She encourages students to honor where they are each day, offering modifications so every practice remains welcoming and accessible.

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Outside the studio, Sophie serves her community as a stormwater-focused civil engineer, helping protect local waterways by ensuring rainwater is responsibly captured, filtered, and returned to the environment. In her free time, she enjoys gardening, foraging, fermenting, paddle boarding, reading, and crafting.

Today, Sophie teaches monthly with the Dahlonega Yoga Collective, where her gentle, beginner-friendly approach complements the Collective's commitment to making yoga accessible, community-centered, and welcoming to every body.

Rah has been teaching yoga since 2018, moving between two very different energies: the stillness and surrender of yin and yoga nidra, and the precision and activation of lyengar-inspired alignment-based flow, built to move the body with intention and build resilience. Rah's teaching is rooted in spanda, the tantric pulse of perpetual expansion and contraction that moves through all things - the same rhythm found in the breath, the heartbeat, and the ebb between doing and undoing. She also enjoys incorporating sound healing, pranayama, meditation, and nourishing the soul with insightful writings into her classes. Her belief is simple: intentional work, wild play, and radical rest are all sacred, and a full life makes room for each. 

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What makes her classes different is the depth she brings to the mat: over a decade of bodywork (therapeutic massage, orthopedic manual therapy, and Thai bodywork), and years of work as a Master Transformational Healing Coach, Board-Certified Hypnotherapist and Master NLP practitioner helping people release the emotional and limiting belief patterns that keep them stuck so they may live vibrant and pleasurable lives. That depth shows up in how she teaches: precise, playful (sometimes a little rebellious), present, and attuned to what's actually happening in the room. As one student put it, "I've never been more IN my body and attuned to my mind until taking Rah's classes." 

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She recently spent six weeks in Medellín, Colombia, in a yoga teaching internship with an accompanying Spanish language immersion program, studying under a range of teachers and styles from all over the globe, while teaching in the community in both English and Spanish.

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When she's not teaching, you'll find her singing karaoke, practicing her Spanish, salsa or pole dancing, going down a rabbit hole with a new interest (currently it's DJing), traveling to a concert or festival, or planning her next trip through Central and South America. She also serves as a Board Member for No One Alone, a local non-profit dedicated to ending domestic violence.

Starr is a Georgia native who grew up in Roswell and spent more than two decades making her way north, with Dahlonega always being her hoped-for final destination. She discovered yoga in 2016 and earned her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training (YTT-200) certification under Akasha Searcy in 2021. Drawn to yoga as a practice of slowing down rather than speeding up, Starr primarily teaches yin yoga, creating a calming space where students can expect long, supported holds, thoughtful readings, and the soothing sounds of crystal singing bowls to encourage deep relaxation and self-reflection. She believes yoga is a "work-in," not a "work-out," and hopes each student leaves feeling more grounded and connected to themselves. Outside the studio, Starr is retired from corporate life and enjoys caring for seniors, hiking, gardening, photography, and spending time with family and friends. She loves being part of the Dahlonega Yoga Collective because of its welcoming, heart-centered community and its shared belief that yoga has the power to heal, connect, and be accessible to everyone. 

Andrea Conarro is an RYT 500 who began her yoga teacher training with Akasha Searcey in 2015 and continued her studies through Asheville Yoga Center. Her asana instruction includes vinyasa flow, yin, and restorative yoga.

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Andrea cherishes yoga for the connection it brings to heart, mind, and spirit, and strives to share that love with her students. For Andrea, the practice extends far beyond the poses themselves: "The time on the mat serves us when we are off the mat, after all." Her teaching reflects that understanding, creating space for students to experience yoga not simply as movement, but as a practice that can accompany them into everyday life.

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Outside of yoga, Andrea is a mother of four and serves families and individuals through her work as a lawyer and guardian ad litem. Her professional and personal life are both deeply rooted in relationships, care, and service to others.

Andrea describes the opportunity to practice with Legacies Peace Center and the Dahlonega Yoga Collective as "deeply nourishing" and hopes to continue supporting this important and intentional work in the community.

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More than anything, Andrea has lately come to esteem being a fellow student on the path—a perspective that reflects the curiosity, humility, and continued learning she brings to her own practice.