About Take Heart Yoga
The bedrock of Take Heart Yoga is that everyone feels not just accepted, but wholeheartedly welcome in all their complex, messy, ever-changing humanness, met only with consistent care, and genuine embodied presence.
Whatever arises within your mind, body and heart will be met with kindness and compassion.
Together we can nurture the shift from stuckness and stagnation to freedom and flow.
Change is possible.
Maybe slow and subtle change to start: what is unbearable becomes barely bearable and the tiniest spark of hope flickers.
You begin to have moments of greater self-awareness and self-regulation, and you notice your ability to pivot away from harmful patterns. With time, these small changes are catalysts for healing feedback loops of clarity, transformation and connection.
It is possible to feel safely embodied, to release what does not serve you and to reclaim empowerment and joy. You can engage in healthy relationships with yourself and others and reconnect with the world's weaving.
Anna Schneider (she/her)
C-IAYT, Ph.D.
My offerings are rooted in my own personal practice (since 2001) using yoga therapy tools to address challenges associated with CPTSD, anxiety, depression and related physiological symptoms. It is an honour to support others on their paths to mental and integrative health as a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT). I am also a psychologist and passionate about the science of well-being and resilience.
Together, my personal and professional experience drives my dedication to creating relationships and communities which feel grounding and nourishing to interrupt cycles of personal, collective and systemic trauma, and to promote the self-discovery and empowerment that allows one’s deepest, truest self (selves) to feel free. I specialize in translating current research and evidence-based best practices in yoga and somatic science into personalized, accessible and effective tools for genuine and long-lasting healing.
Unprocessed trauma lives in the body in a complex web of physiological processes.
We also experience mental illness in the body, for example the racing heart and shortened breath of anxiety, or the heaviness and fog of depression.
Research has shown that somatic (body-based), integrative therapies – like yoga therapy - are pivotal for deep physical release of constriction, for retraining the nervous system to be responsive and resilient, and for cultivating new neural pathways, leading to sustained transformation.
I am privileged to have trained in practices originating outside of my own ancestry. I respect this privilege by deep study of the roots and evolution of yoga and the responsible sharing of what I learn.
I acknowledge that what I teach is not my own, but the collective wisdom of so many others, and that I will forever be a student.