Amanda Smear Baudier

Amanda is a passionate yoga teacher and the founder of The Social Sutras (www.thesocialsutras.com), a community building portal for yogis around the world. The site unites yoga devotees of all levels & styles of practice via a digital platform as well as at curated events and activations- including the first ever "Yoga Experience" at Live Nation's Voodoo Experience 2014. She currently resides in New Orleans where she leads classes and workshops on yoga, meditation and mindfulness as a path to self-healing and stress reduction - a topic she knows about firsthand.

After spending the first 9 years of her career running high-profile events in NYC for celebrities like Beyonce & Heidi Klum (to name a few), Amanda was diagnosed with a genetic condition that led to heart surgery in 2013. Knowing that her fast-paced, stressful life was detrimental to her health, Amanda took the surgery as a sign that she needed to follow her, well...heart! Having already been certified to teach yoga, she dove head first into the world of integrative wellness, studying with master teachers in NYC and completing trainings with Yoga Vida, ISHTA Yoga, Urban Zen and The Institute of Integrative Nutrition. She recently starred in a 34 part "Yoga for Beginners" series for About.com and her writing has been featured on Yoga City NYC, in The Baltimore Sun, and in a monthly yoga-centric newsletter called "Mad Props" that is circulated via www.thesocialsutras.com.

Amanda's goal is to expose as many people as possible to the benefits of yoga, mindfulness and meditation while deepening her own practice. Using her event planning expertise and deep respect for the teachings of yoga, she supports charitable, community-building initiatives and helps yoga professionals streamline and publicize their efforts. Having graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature, writing is both a creative release and a return to her roots. She is currently writing her first book entitled "My Life in Dog Years," and hopes to finish it in one dog year or less.