Our Studio
About House of Yoga
House of Yoga is a small boutique studio and school in Claremont, founded on a simple belief: that yoga should feel personal. We keep classes intimate, so every student gets real attention and the support to progress at their own pace.
Our timetable runs from strong, energising flows to slow, restorative practice, and our 200-hour teacher training welcomes those ready to go deeper. Whatever brings you here, you’ll find experienced teachers, a warm community and a practice that grows with you.
Leigh Wood
Founder & Lead Teacher
Leigh has been practicing yoga since 2004 and has been teaching since completing her 200-hour teacher training in 2016 with the Marianne Wells Yoga School, followed by her 300-hour advanced training in 2020 with The Shala Yoga School. In 2018, she established House of Yoga in Cape Town, where she teaches full-time, leading group and private classes, workshops, retreats, and the studio's 200-hour teacher training.
Before transitioning into yoga full-time, Leigh spent over a decade in the corporate world across the financial, real estate, and renewable energy sectors in both London and Cape Town. During this time, yoga became a steady and supportive thread amid the demands of professional life.
With a background in dance and a broad exploration of lineages and styles including Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Yin, and Restorative yoga, Leigh's teaching is both grounded and intuitive. She weaves together these influences to create classes that invite awareness, curiosity, and a sense of coming home to the body.
Leigh is passionate about sharing yoga as a practical and accessible path for modern living. She sees the practice as a way to cultivate presence, build a more compassionate relationship with oneself, and navigate life with greater steadiness and ease. Her teaching encourages students to reconnect with the body as a source of intelligence and guidance, fostering a deeper sense of autonomy, authenticity, and wellbeing.
Candice Momsen
Yoga Teacher
"Yoga and meditation have given me ritual, refuge, an opening into self – discovery."
Through a lifetime of curious exploration, Candice has developed a self-practice rooted in intuitive movement, yoga, meditation, breath work and self-study. She believes this potent combination of weaving breath, movement, contemplation and meditation is the path to healing and empowerment.
Candice's teachings are gentle and explorative, threaded with embodied philosophy. She holds space for students to journey to their own rhythms and embodiment as gateways to embrace their depths, delighting in their own empowerment and awakening. In this way the practice becomes a call to home – to ourselves.
After undertaking her first 200hr Teacher Training in 2020, she went on to complete her 300hr under the guidance of Tamsin and Thomas Sheehy at The Shala.
Giulia Tarantello
Yoga Teacher & Studio Manager
With a background in fitness, Giulia has always followed an active lifestyle – keeping her body moving has always been her number one goal.
A healthy and fit daily routine led her to discover her love of yoga, as the fundamentals of her yoga practice allowed a deeper connection to her body as well as her mind.
After finding her place on the mat, Giulia proceeded with her 200hr teacher training at The Wellness Connection in Cape Town, which ignited a deep passion for the world of yoga anatomy. Giulia's classes not only focus on strength building and alignment but also touch on a softer side of connection through breath to movement, allowing the mind to reconnect with the body.
Through her experience of teaching, Giulia has discovered the beauty of slow progression through movement and dedication to practice. She aims to focus on each and every student's journey in their own practice and to guide them in a way which encourages more curiosity about their own body and finding contentment with where they are.
Karen Drew
Yoga Teacher
"Let's BREATHE, MOVE & RELAX together."
Karen is a certified yoga teacher for both adults and children, having trained through House of Yoga and Yoga4Kids. She is passionate about making yoga and mindfulness accessible, enjoyable and meaningful for everyone.
Her yoga journey began over 15 years ago, when she discovered how powerful the practice could be in helping her manage stress, find calm and restore balance in daily life. Inspired by these benefits, she now shares yoga as a way to support others in building resilience, cultivating inner peace and finding joy through movement and stillness.
Whether on the mat or in daily life, yoga for Karen is about more than poses. It's about creating space to connect, recharge and grow.
Yarisha Singh
Yoga Teacher
Yarisha is an accomplished movement specialist – a yoga teacher and dance performer, teacher and choreographer with a passion for dance that began at a young age. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Dance with Distinction at the University of Cape Town and performed with several professional dance companies in South Africa for over a decade, including Cape Town City Ballet, Free Flight Dance Company, La Rosa Spanish Dance Theatre, Jozi Dance Company and Msanzi Productions. Yarisha was a well established teacher and choreographer in Cape Town before becoming the Head of Dance at StudioRepublik in Dubai for five years. She has returned to South Africa with plans to continue intensive dance training and choreography within the country. She is passionate about the emotional process within the creative realm, the performer's mental and physical transformation as well as creative collaboration in the industry.
Yarisha became a certified Yoga instructor in 2009 and went on to open her own studio, Yoga by Yarisha, where she guided many students in their search for personal and physical transformation. She also taught for many Yoga studios across South Africa, Thailand and in Dubai, as well as directing numerous Wellness Retreats. Yarisha's teaching style is largely a fusion of many different Yoga schoolings, influenced by her dance experience and a quest for balance.
Rowan Banks
Yoga Teacher
Rowan started practising yoga towards the end of high school, just over 10 years ago. Someone gave her a DVD with a 45-minute yoga practice on it, and she did it over and over again. She was never into most school sports, and having stopped gymnastics earlier in high school, she was thrilled to have found something that felt good for her body and also helped her focus her mind.
She then found Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and only later discovered the joy of going to live classes. Yoga and pole dance, which she discovered about six years ago, have been constant companions ever since. She started teaching pole dance in 2022, and in 2025 completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training through House of Yoga. She started teaching straight after her training and has loved it.
For Rowan, it's special to share something that has been such a big part of her own life. She hopes to create a safe and comfortable space for students to tune in to their body and mind, develop strength and focus, and breathe ease into their movements. Most of all, she hopes to help them cultivate a gentle, curious attitude in their practice that they can carry into the rest of their day and week, helping them meet the world and the people in their lives from a more centred, grounded place.
Calmin Valentino
Yoga Teacher
Calmin has been teaching yoga for nine years, bringing together his learning from creative teacher trainings, love of sport and commitment to mindful movement and meditation.
A lifelong student of the body, he continues to explore how we move and how yoga can be sequenced with clear intention. His experience in endurance sport – including ultra-marathons, trail races, Hyrox events and 100-mile races – has shaped an approach that balances strength and mobility with breath, recovery and stillness.
Calmin's classes are fiery, creative and playful, with thoughtful sequencing and detailed guidance. Expect an energising Vinyasa practice led by the breath, balanced by moments of softness and deeply guided meditation.
Courtney Naumann
Yoga Teacher
Courtney is an RYT 550 yoga teacher and holistic wellness practitioner with more than five years of teaching experience, both locally and internationally. Her teaching explores the connection between mind and body, combining creative movement and mindfulness with moments of stillness.
She teaches Vinyasa, Power, Sculpt, Yin, Restorative Yoga and Yoga Nidra, creating classes that feel grounding, intuitive and accessible. Her approach extends beyond the physical practice, inviting students to slow down, turn their attention inward and explore yoga as a way of living with greater presence and awareness.
Mana Weideman
Yoga Teacher
Mana is a 500-hour qualified yoga teacher with additional training in Yin Yoga. She enjoys teaching across the full spectrum of practice – from strong, dynamic and energising flows to slow, mindful and deeply restorative classes.
While her classes offer a shared sense of community, Mana encourages each student to make the practice their own. Through thoughtful guidance and attentive movement, she invites students to soften the noise of the outside world, listen more closely to their bodies and respond to what they need in each moment. Her teaching supports students in building trust in their body's intelligence and developing a deeper relationship with themselves through asana.
