As lifelong learners ourselves, we treasure the opportunity to share this time in your life as you discover new levels of depth in your own yoga practice, as you nurture relationships with other yoga enthusiasts, practitioners and teachers, and as you take a fresh look into the inner world of the friends, family members, students and clients you are preparing to serve.

With great joy in sharing the yoga journey, we welcome you to Nosara.

Amba and Don Stapleton, Ph. D.
Directors of Nosara Yoga Institute

One of the first things people often want to know about us is how Don and I landed in Costa Rica. Well, let me tell you a little story. Nosara Yoga Institute would never have been born in Central America had the Henderson family not decided to take a summer vacation “somewhere different.” Mom was the advanced scout and located a perfect destination.

As a member of the Business and Professional Women’s Club of the Florida Keys, my mother and her friends made a fateful decision. The year was 1967. Instead of staying at home and making apple pie, these moms packed their Samsonite bags, left their kids and husbands at home to fend for themselves and split town as diplomats to a developing country.

The lucky country was Costa Rica. How much time could the kids and Dad be without Mom? One week was the maximum. So they spent just one short week visiting San Jose, the capital city and some surrounding villages. Her little excursion was to influence the rest my life. Mom came back all excited about this beautiful little country that all of us just had to see.

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From his early childhood in New Mexico and Texas, Don Stapleton felt a calling for the inner journey. Stimulated by his interests in drawing and painting, his family and teachers aided him in developing his creative abilities. He was awarded a full scholarship in painting to Pepperdine University, which transplanted him into the crossroads of California at a time when discoveries in the fields of creativity, humanistic psychology and spiritual consciousness were transforming culture. Motivated by his curiosity into the creative process, he studied early childhood development and the educational climates that either fostered or thwarted creative self-expression and individuation. Pennsylvania State University granted Don an NDEA Fellowship to continue his development as both an artist and an educator. His doctoral studies in the creative learning process earned him a doctorate degree in 1976. In his career as a professor at the University of South Florida and the Philadelphia College of Art, he had the opportunity to prepare teachers for innovative approaches to education.

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