We aspire to create a skilled and vibrant yoga community to support our students’ personal development, so they can realize their life’s purpose and live from a place of joy and well-being.

Group of people attending a yoga class in a studio with wooden floors, sitting on mats, listening to instructor at the front.

What makes Yoga for Life unique?

Since 2010, we’re a small, locally rooted studio with global vision.
Offering Yoga Alliance–registered 200-hour and 500-hour Teacher Trainings since 2011. Our graduates teach nationally & internationally.
Co-founded by a teacher raised in a yogic and spiritual family in Kolkata, India—bringing an authentic connection to yoga’s origins. (Few studios in the West are owned and guided by Indian yogis.)
The Co-founding team of Kelly Suttell and Raj Patra brings over six decades of collective personal practices and trainings, along with expertise in complementary healing practices like Functional Anatomy, Reiki, and Family Constellation Therapy.
Hosting International Yoga Retreats since 2015, creating life-changing experiences around the world.

Yoga for Life is where tradition, authenticity, and community come together—helping you immerse, grow, and thrive.

Who is Yoga for Life?

Our mission:

To welcome all practitioners, regardless of your fitness level

To teach ancient yoga techniques to modern, western practitioners

To inspire and challenge your mind, body, and spirit

To be kind, inspiring, and well-educated teachers

We value:

Curious learners who want more from their yoga practice

A non-judgmental community

Yoga as a life practice, not just fitness classes

Our Story

Two men smiling and standing close together outdoors, with the man on the left having his arm around the shoulder of the man on the right.

Raj Patra and Kelly Suttell, co-founders of Yoga for Life, started their yoga journey with each other in 2005. Raj grew up in Kolkata, India amidst a highly educated and spiritual family and was embedded in the practices of yoga since he was seven yeas old; he left India and yoga to come to the US to study Physics. Kelly was an internationally traveling, marathon running, pilot, with a degree in Business, who kept getting herniated inter-vertebral discs, and was asked to start doing yoga. These two lives, almost world apart, came together in Seattle, after which, at some point, Kelly asked Raj, “Do you want to come to a yoga class with me?” One class turned into many, which turned into few yoga teacher trainings, and into teaching many classes together. Eventually, a random Craigslist ad for a yoga studio sale in Portland, and a confetti of divine interventions later, Yoga for Life was born on May 01, 2010.

Raj and Kelly’s yoga journey evolved significantly after their path crossed with Guruji Andrey Lappa, a Ukranian Yoga Master, who had spent majority of his life in India and Nepal, and dedicated his effort to create and teach Universal Yoga - uniting the essential and practical yoga teachings Buddhism and Hinduism (Tantra) into a comprehensive system with scientific precision and unlimited potential of spirituality.

Today, Yoga for Life is a beacon of the potential of Yoga in the West: ancient teachings of physical and personal practices delivered to modern practitioners with precision, integrity and respect to the lineage, building a vibrant yoga community to support students’ personal development, so they can realize their life’s purpose and live from a place of joy and well-being.