By Jim Cavan

Ever since opening his Market Square studio on New Year’s Day 2009, Jonas “Zev” Amberger has been a one-man yoga machine.

With dozens of students flocking to the studio’s spacious, wooden-floored 2nd story studio every day, being the only instructor – while an oft-rewarding challenge – can also exhausting.

Luckily for Zev, help is on the way: he’s spent the last sixteen months training a new crew of seven teachers to help take the pressure off his ever-growing business. To celebrate, Zev Yoga will be offering free drop-in classes from June 1st through the 11th.

While the specific schedule has yet to be hashed out, Zev contends that there will be plenty of day and evening classes available.

Amberger, who aside from some guest teachers has been the studio’s sole instructor since it opened its doors in early 2009, must feel pretty confident about the abilities of his disciples: he’s actually leaving town and heading out to Seattle for the first part of June, leaving the studio exclusively in the hands of the newly-minted instructors.

“Most of them have been studying with me for a while, and some for as long as ten years,” explains Zev. “But the philosophy of the teacher training was to help them discovery their own unique voice and their own unique way of facilitating the teaching of a yoga class. So I wasn’t aiming for a set structure of how they would teach; I wanted their personalities to infuse the class.”

Zev specializes in Ashtanga Yoga, an ancient practice that involves synchronizing the breath with a progressive series of postures. The resulting practice produces intense internal heat and a profuse, purifying sweat that detoxifies muscles and organs, improves circulation, and gives way to a light, strong body and calm mind.

While many of classes offered at Zev have Ashtanga as their root, Amberger doesn’t feel his studio has to be pigeonholed into one way of doing things. “We do offer one purely Ashtanga class, but the other classes are sort of offshoots of that approach,” explains Zev. “What they all share in common and where they remain consistent is in their development of breath, movement, and coordination.”

Amberger, who has been practicing yoga for nearly two decades, boasts a degree in Ayurvedic Medicine from India’s Sanskrit University. Having opened a studio in the Berkshires in 2006, Zev has since moved back to Portsmouth, which has enjoyed a sort of yoga boom over the last five years.

Zev’s new program aims to continue that trend here on the Seacoast.

“For people out there who always thought about coming to a yoga class and could never find the time, this is a great opportunity,” says Zev.