Our Team
Renée Tillotson, Legacy Founder & Director
Grandma said… when you come upon something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.
– The Education of Little Tree
Renée fell in love with gymnastics as soon as she saw it at age 11. By age 15 she was coaching others in the gymnastics she loved so much. She’s been sharing through teaching ever since.
Fast forward to 2002, when she started to learn and then teach Nia. Now a second degree Nia Black Belt, Renée says, “Nia connects me to pure Joy. I want to share that Joy with every student who steps into my circle. Nia serves as a moving meditation for me, as well as a chance to play like a child again! I like to think of my classes as invigorating the body, steadying the mind, and elevating the spirit.”
Also in 2002, Renée and her husband started their family’s Prometheus Construction company, operating here in Hawai’i to stabilize steep, dangerous slopes. That company made it possible for them to open Still & Moving Center in 2011, with the mission to “create space for moving meditation”. The Center offered moving arts classes from around the world: yoga, dance, martial arts, somatic movement, and fitness.
Renée became painfully aware of how many people elsewhere are moving non-mindfully and getting hurt, often in the name of ‘getting fit’. Teachers and coaches cannot instruct others to do things they haven’t been taught themselves. So, in 2021 she opened the Academy of Mindful Movement to train instructors to incorporate specific mindfulness techniques that she had garnered from her teachers in life. If you come upon something good, share it! She did.
By the time of her 70th birthday, Renée recognized what an amazing collection of talented instructors, capable staff, and supportive students around her. So, she decided to convert her movement companies into nonprofit organizations that the community will be able to sustain long into the future. Hence Still & Moving Center branched into Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship and also into Still & Moving Community Center. And the Academy of Mindful Movement metamorphosed into the Path to Moving Meditation! See Our Story. [make hot]
Engaged in an earnest, life-long spiritual quest, Renée assembles the Still & Moving Center Almanac each year, filled with inspirational quotes by everyone from the Dalai Lama to Dolly Parton, and frequently by Nia Founder Debbie Rosas. She loves taking part in conversations that merge philosophical, spiritual and scientific thought with a lifestyle of compassion.
Renée seeks to cultivate her Line of Life’s Meditation. Along the way, she has found ways to meditate in motion, and she shares those ways with others – like you!
Mālia Helelā, Co-Trainer & Archivist
Mālia Koʻiʻulaokawaolehua Helelā is a kumu hula, a traditional hula teacher. She is also a lomilomi massage practitioner and trainer, a musician, and a Hawaiian cultural artist devoted to preserving and cultivating the traditions of Hawaiʻi through movement, music, healing, and storytelling. As a Co-Trainer of the Path to Moving Meditation program and a graduate of the former Academy of Mindful Movement, Mālia weaves mindful movement and embodies awareness into all that she teaches.
Kumu Mālia Helelā’s students and trainees experience the beauty, wisdom, and spirit of Hawaiʻi through her teaching. With warmth, authenticity, and deep cultural knowledge, she creates a welcoming environment where students of all ages create connection — with themselves, with one another, with the ʻāina (the land, nature), and with the living traditions of Hawaiʻi.
Founder of the Nā Hula Ola Aloha school of hula at Still & Moving Community Center, Mālia completed her ʻūniki (graduation) under Kumu Hula Puluelo Park in 2002 and studied oli (Hawaiian chanting) under Kumu Hula John Keola Lake. Through hula, chant, song, and original choreography, she honors her lineage while inspiring students to experience Hawaiian culture with reverence, joy, and aloha.
Mālia’s connection to lomilomi massage began in childhood through the teachings of her mother. A licensed massage therapist in Hawaiʻi since 1998, Mālia shares lomilomi as a sacred healing art rooted in aloha, balance, and a deep relationship with the ʻāina. She is preparing to open Puana Lomilomi Academy to preserve and pass on this treasured Hawaiian tradition to future generations.
She is also a gifted musician and recording artist, sharing her creativity through her musical duo called Kai Ea. Her album Keiki Hula Love, features original songs that inspire children and celebrate Hawaiian language, values and culture. Through hula, lomilomi, music, and cultural education, Kumu Mālia gives her students and audiences a heartfelt experience of the rich traditions, values, and living culture of Hawaiʻi.
Dustin Hara, Co-Trainer & General Manager
Dustin Hara serves as a musician, vocal artist, vocal coach, teacher, business manager, consultant, and transformational leader. He is a Co-Trainer of the Path to Moving Meditation program and a graduate of the former Academy of Mindful Movement. In all of these capacities, Dustin dedicates himself to helping people discover their fullest potential.
Dustin’s students and trainees discover their confidence, creativity, and authentic self-expression through music, mindful movement, and meditation. Whether developing their teaching, their voice, their artistry, students appreciate Dustin’s encouraging, intuitive teaching style. He helps people to reconnect with their inner potential, nurturing the whole human being – body, mind, emotions, and Self.
Raised in a family of preachers, Dustin discovered his love for music and the creative arts at an early age. After temporarily losing confidence in his musical abilities, Dustin experienced a life-changing event that reignited his gift and set him on a lifelong journey of teaching, sharing, and service.
Today, Dustin works as the General Manager of three related organizations: Path to Moving Meditation, Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship, and Still & Moving Community Center. Here he oversees daily operations, organizational growth, and community development. On the lighter side, he doubles as a vocal coach and music director at Still & Moving Community Center.
Through music, leadership, and education, Dustin passionately devotes himself to helping people reconnect with their purpose, awaken their unique gifts, and cultivate lives filled with greater joy, awareness, and meaning.
Robin Shepard, Intern Trainer
Robin’s students enjoy her genuine enthusiasm and steady, highly experienced guidance. They find that regularly practicing yoga, chair yoga or aerial yoga with her makes a difference in their bodies and their lives. Robin sees yoga as a doorway, progressing from movement into mindfulness, meditation, awareness, understanding, and finally acceptance of ourselves and others.
Robin is a Level 1 Mindful Movement Instruction graduate of the former Academy of Mindful Movement. As Intern Trainer in the Path to Moving Meditation, she assists with our teacher trainings. Robin has completed her Aerial Yoga and Aerial Hammock Dance teacher training and has co-led teacher trainings with Carmen Curtis, founder of AIReal Yoga.
As a highly accomplished Yoga instructor, Robin has logged over 2000 hours of yoga teaching. She completed her foundational yoga teacher trainings with Suzanne Vian of Yoga Vietnam and her 300 hour Yoga Teacher Training in the FluidUs Method with Carlos Tao. She assisted with Yoga Teacher Trainings. Robin is an experienced, registered Children’s Yoga Teacher and a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider, with training in Pre-Natal and Post-Natal yoga.
Robin enjoys teaching both the young and the young-at-heart. As a life-long learner, she is fascinated by recent scientific discoveries around fascia and functional movement and their implications for the practice of yoga. This curiosity has fueled exploration and experimentation to create a style of movement that is playful and dynamic, with practical benefit for everyone from absolute beginners to more advanced practitioners. She is always looking for ways to deliver a more personal experience, with both sincerity and playfulness. She links functional movement skills, breath mechanics, and novel approaches to traditional poses to increase somatic awareness, mobility, and build an organic mind/body connection.
Robin spent 13 years traveling and residing in Asia. There she raised her family, and acquired knowledge and skills in Guangzhou and Shanghai, China, as well as Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, where she felt lucky to have been a part of the vibrant yoga culture. Robin brings a wealth of world experience and cultural appreciation to the Path to Moving Meditation.
E-RTY500, RCYT, YACEP
Yoga Alliance Registry # 212567
Sarah Hodges, Design Manager
Sarah Hodges’ talents extend in many directions, mostly involving motion and artistry. She always starts with stillness, moving from the inside out. There’s an underlying quietude, a knowingness, beneath even her most exuberant designs.
Sarah is a contemporary artist first trained by her grandfather and contemporary realist painter Snowden Hodges at the early age of 12 years old. She went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and then moved to New York City for a year at the Grand Central Academy with the renowned classical painter Jacob Collins. Captivated by the old European city of Florence and by the classical art that filled its streets, Sarah stayed to study with masters of classical realism at the Florence Academy of Art. Her training was to silently, intently look, and then do: paint.
Back home in Hawai’i, Sarah applied herself to the islands’ traditional healing art of lomilomi massage, again combining silence and movement. She graduated with her Level 1 Mindful Movement Instructor certification from the former Academy of Mindful Movement using lomilomi massage as her movement practice. Sarah meditates in stillness – such as at Vipassana retreats – or in motion.
One of her earliest activities as a youngster was horseback riding, which she began by developing a stil, intuitive rapport with the animal. A student of ballet, hula, salsa, and African dance, Sarah came into her own by training in butoh, a meditative dance format arising out of a state of motionless awareness. She currently serves as lead dancer for IONA Contemporary Dance Theatre, for which she has pioneered an other-wordly portrayal of the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele, emerging from stoney motionlessness into living, glowing, flowing lava.
She slings a camera over her shoulder for walks in nature or urban settings, of landscapes or people, winning awards for her insight-full photography. She uses words beautifully, usually written, often in the form of poetry. Not always silent, though, Sarah beautifully plays a violin in casual, local kanikapila get-togethers, wielding her violin as effortlessly as another Hawaiian musician might strum their ukulele.
Sarah now lives in Hawaii, where she continues to explore the relationship between the classical art forms, contemporary concepts, and today’s cutting edge technology. Although she may have been trained to color within the lines, Sarah always manages to come up with something outside the box, whether she’s designing a logo, a brochure or a website’s pages. She lets something magical come through the steady aperture of her imagination.
No matter her medium, Sarah’s art conveys stillness in motion.
Sharonne Samiere, Communications Manager
Sharonne discovered yoga at the age of 18 and has been a dedicated practitioner ever since. She is a certified yoga teacher with 200-hour trainings in Functional Vinyasa Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga, and has also completed our Level 1 Mindful Movement Instructor training.
Sharonne believes that movement, breath, and sound are profound teachers. They have the power to bring us into the present moment, awaken our awareness, and remind us of the deep connection between body, mind, and heart. Through yoga asana, meditation, and sound healing, Sharonne creates experiences that invite students to slow down, listen inward, and reconnect with the joy and aliveness that are always available within.
People fall in love with Sharonne whenever they meet her. She exudes warmth and enthusiasm – as you’ll notice on the dance floor with her! Since she truly cares about others and knows how to listen deeply, she’s a great communicator.
Her writing is strong and clear, conveying both information, verve, and a genuine feeling for her subject. She’s also got a flair for design. She knows how to share just enough and no more. If you’ve appreciated any of our letters, calls, or other communiques, chances are you’re enjoying Sharonne’s touch.