A Yoga Therapy Approach

There’s a meaningful difference between a yoga class and a yoga therapy session, and that difference shapes everything I offer.

A traditional yoga class is built around a sequence. A therapeutic approach is built around the person. It draws on the full breadth of yoga’s teachings — movement, breath, meditation, philosophy, and the study of the subtle body — to support specific goals: nervous system regulation, pain care, emotional resilience, healing after trauma, support through grief or illness.

I am currently a Yoga Therapist in Training through Inner Peace Yoga Therapy’s 800-hour certification program, which is accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT). The program brings together clinical rigor and the depth of yoga’s wisdom traditions, training practitioners to apply yoga as a genuine path of healing — not a workout with breath cues attached.

This training informs everything I do, both in group classes and in private sessions.

What Makes a Class Trauma-Sensitive

Trauma-sensitive yoga is built on principles that traditional classes often overlook:

Choice in every moment. You’re invited to try a shape, never told to hold a pose. Modifications and rests are offered throughout, and choosing any of them is part of the practice — not a deviation from it.

Steady, predictable language. Cueing is paced and clear. There are no surprises, no rushed transitions, no language designed to push you somewhere you haven’t agreed to go.

No hands-on adjustments. Your physical space is yours. I never touch students to correct or deepen a pose. Consent is a baseline, not a bonus.

Emphasis on interoception, not aesthetics. The goal isn’t to make a shape look a certain way. It’s to feel what’s happening inside the shape — and to build the kind of inner awareness that travels with you off the mat.

As Bessel van der Kolk writes, “People who feel safe in their bodies can begin to translate the memories that previously overwhelmed them into language.” Safety in the body is where deep healing starts.

Working with the Subtle Body

Much of what we carry — trauma, grief, chronic pain, anxiety — doesn’t live in the gross physical body alone. It lives in the breath, in the energetic patterns of holding and bracing, in the quieter layers the yoga tradition calls the koshas, or sheaths of self.

A meaningful part of my teaching focuses on helping students develop awareness in the subtle body: the breath body (pranamaya kosha), the mental-emotional body (manomaya kosha), and the wisdom body (vijnanamaya kosha). These layers respond to practice differently than muscles do. They soften with breath, with stillness, with attention. They reveal what the thinking mind alone often can’t.

This is also why yoga nidra — the practice of conscious, guided rest — is central to what I offer. Yoga nidra invites the nervous system into a deeply restorative state somewhere between waking and sleep, where old patterns can begin to release without effort or struggle. For many of my students, it has become one of the most meaningful tools in their healing.

How Yoga Supports Nervous System Regulation

A nervous system that has spent years in high alert — or in the opposite state of shutdown — doesn’t reset on its own. The body needs new experiences of safety, in small, repeatable doses.

Trauma-sensitive yoga offers exactly that. A long exhale signals the parasympathetic system to soften. A grounded standing pose communicates stability. A guided body scan rebuilds the connection between sensation and awareness. Yoga nidra restores depleted reserves. Over time, these practices become tools you can carry into hard conversations, sleepless nights, panic that rises out of nowhere, and the ordinary stress of being a person.

This kind of embodied practice can help you:

• Recognize signs of dysregulation earlier
• Move through difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed
• Reconnect with physical sensation after periods of numbness or dissociation
• Rest more deeply
• Build resilience that holds up outside the studio

Meet Your Teacher

Hi, I’m Jenn.

I came to this work as a student first — drawn to yoga because I needed it, and slowly understanding that it was offering me something far deeper than I’d realized. That experience shapes how I teach. I trust the practice. I trust the body. And I trust the people who walk into my classes to know more about their own healing than anyone else can.

Over the past several years, my teaching has evolved significantly. I’ve moved away from busy, choreographed sequences and toward something quieter and more inquiry-based. My classes now hold more space for stillness, for breath, for the kind of self-study (svadhyaya) that yoga has always pointed toward. The roots of this tradition — including Tantric philosophy and the teachings of the koshas — inform everything I bring to the mat.

Training and Credentials

• Yoga Therapist in Training — Inner Peace Yoga Therapy’s 800-Hour Yoga Therapy Certification Program (accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists / IAYT) – Expected to complete, October 2027
• 300-Hour Foundations in Yoga Therapy — Inner Peace Yoga Therapy (May 2026)
• 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training — Denver Yoga Underground (2022)
• 40-Hour Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Teacher Training — Buffalo + Sparrow Yoga Collective (2023)
• Pain Care Aware™ Practitioner Certification — integrating modern pain science with traditional yoga
• Yoga and Pregnancy — Kari Kwinn at White Lotus (2023)
• Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) — Yoga Alliance

Continuing Areas of Study

• Yoga for trauma, PTSD and C-PTSD
• Yoga for grief and loss
• Yoga for stress and mental health
• Yoga and the cancer care continuum
• Yoga of recovery
• Yoga for the subtle body
• Functional yoga
• Yoga Nidra

Specialties

• Trauma-sensitive yoga
• Pain care and chronic pain
• Yoga for anxiety and stress
• Grief and loss
• Yoga Nidra and restorative practice
• Perimenopause, menopause, and beyond
• Functional yoga