Somewhere around the age of 4 years, Rodney Yee became fascinated with the complexities of the human body.  Through gymnastics as a child and teenager, he was eventually led to majoring in physical therapy and philosophy at UC Davis and UC Berkeley.  His path was diverted when he accepted an apprenticeship with the Oakland Ballet Company in 1977.

In 1980, Rodney fell in love with Yoga.  A single class was all it took.  He was in awe with how it had such a profound effect on him not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally.  At that time he had become a member of the Oakland Ballet Company, and for a dancer he had a very bound-up body.  He went to yoga in search of flexibility and found a practice that would turn into his life-long passion and career.  In 1981, after finishing a year-long stint with the Matsuyama Ballet Company of Tokyo, he came back to the San Francisco Bay Area to study yoga full time.  Going back and forth between training programs at the San Francisco Iyengar Yoga Institute and at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, he began to study yoga several hours a day.  In 1987, after becoming a certified Iyengar yoga teacher, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, with Richard Rosen and Claire Finn.

A couple years later, Rodney was featured in the Yoga Journal wall calendars for 1989 and 1991.  In 1992 he made his first yoga video with Healing Arts and Yoga Journal.  With Rodney’s talent and passion for teaching and with the exposure from the videos and calendars, he started teaching nationally.  In 1993 he won the Lyndhurst Prize, mainly for education about yoga in the Southern states.  At that point he had taught in almost every state in the South.  Yoga was slowly spreading throughout the United States.

In 2000, fifteen or so videos later, Rodney was invited to be on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  This catapulted the sales of his videos, which at that point had come under the guidance and ownership of Gaiam.

As of 2007, Rodney has over 30 video titles and numerous audio recordings with Gaiam.  He has also written two books, Yoga: the Poetry of the Body and Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee, both in collaboration with Nina Zolotow.

Now Rodney teaches nationally and internationally with his wife Colleen.  They also teach in Sag Harbor at his wife’s studio Yoga Shanti, co-owned with Jessica Bellofatto.

In Spring 2007, Rodney and Colleen were co-chairs and panelists for the Urban Zen Initiative, a forum dedicated to integrating eastern healing arts into the western medical paradigm.  They are now helping to run the Health and Wellness branch of Urban Zen, a world-wide initiative of Donna Karan’s.

Most importantly, they are raising and being raised by four awesome children, Evan, Adesha, Rachel, and Johanna.  At this point in his life journey, Rodney realizes that Colleen and the kids are the real source of all of his yogic growth.