ANNIE HICKMAN has been practicing yoga for the past 40 years and teaching for the past 12. Arriving in New York City from the Midwest to pursue her career as an artist, she stumbled upon the Sivananda Yoga Center and enjoyed their ashram in the Catskill Mountains. There she smelled incense for the first time, learned yoga, breathing techniques, and meditation, weeded their vegetable garden, and cleaned the bathrooms. She soon had a job working for her favorite artist, Marisol, and discovered her own art world in a pet shop. The exquisite frogs, lizards, and even insects inspired her to make costumes, which she later began weaving out of basketry. Many years of dance training and yoga taught her to move gracefully in her creature costumes and carried her around the world in her own productions. In the late 1980's she married her performing partner, Allynn Goowin, and along with their son Ozzie, performed in places as far away as Paris, Singapore, and China.

When Jivamukti Yoga opened its doors in the East Village in the 1980's,
Annie was entranced by their creative wild child style of power yoga and was inspired to become a yoga teacher. For the past 12 years, as her costume events flourished, Annie has been teaching yoga to children and adults in yoga centers, gyms, libraries, and schools. Annie has used her creativity and playfulness in designing her own brand of yoga for children, which she calls "Fairytale Yoga". She teaches this regularly at the Youngworld School in Mahwah, NJ and at the Lower East Side Girls' Club in NYC where Annie is currently creating her first Fairytale Yoga DVD. For the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, NY Annie has directed Family Week programs combining her stage show with yoga, costume, basketry, and art workshops. Annie is on staff for the wellness division as the yoga teacher at the NYU pediatric brain tumor center thru the Making Headway Foundation.