DANA ROGERS (she/her)
E-RYT yoga teacher and retreat leader.
Brain Body Being facilitator and Faculty Member.
Registered Clinical Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist
My journey down this path of embodied healing began in 2016 on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. I had just begun a dedicated yoga practice after years of drifting aimlessly through addiction and depression, feeling completely lost and alone. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I couldn’t continue in the direction I was going.
I spent the first twenty years of my life as a dancer and performer, so I felt deeply connected to expression through movement and living into the edges of my skin. Once I started working as a bartender in my early twenties I gradually drifted further from my body and myself.
I took to numbing depression and anxiety with drugs and alcohol. I engaged in risky behaviours, cut off any sort of meaningful connection, purposely ruining any true relationships I had. I began to believe the narrative that I was a bad person who does bad things.
In that jungle years later I met Carlos Duran, a man working with healing through the lens of his Colombian ayahuasca lineage. He had healed a lifetime of his own family trauma and was – still is – helping others find their own healing in truly remarkable ways.
This was my first introduction to millennia old teachings and truths about our connection to one another, ancestors, nature, and the universe.
During a beautiful healing session of body work, massage, tobacco and sound therapy, Carlos began to tell me things he couldn’t possibly know about my life. With a few simple words seemingly plucked out of nowhere he told me, “you’re not a bad person”.
I felt a seismic paradigmatic shift in my body and everything I had come to believe about myself began to melt away,
My life became WIDER.
From there I completed my Aerial Yoga Teacher Training in Toronto, my 200hr YTT in Costa Rica, and I returned to that same school to facilitate a new crop of yogis. I began teaching as frequently as I could, I left the bartending job that kept me on my feet until 4am, degraded and abused, trading it for a family run local restaurant. I welcomed community into my life.
Momentum began to carry me towards ease and opportunity. Things don’t full stop and reverse, it’s like stopping a fast moving freight train, but little by little they become easier.
The next huge pivot started in Rishikesh in 2019 on Bhakti Yoga Intensive with two of my most cherished teachers – Mallorie Prem Buoy of Homebody Healing and Usha Anandi from Womben Wellness.
On a platform in the Himalayas they introduced a somatic education that would carry me further into the knowledge I had been yearning for.
Cue Covid 19…
Soon after, all of my yoga classes pivoted to the disconnected web world and I struggled with technical issues beyond my understanding. I became isolated, I fell deeper into my addiction, and I thought it would be a long, dark time.
One of the few and unforeseen benefits of this new experience was the move to online learning that brought tons of resources and classes straight into my home. I took a few back to back workshops and intensives and was essentially rescued by my curiosity and the access to beautiful teachings and new voices.
Continued learning builds new neural networks and – in and of itself – is an amazing tool for change.
It still took until 2021 to begin to truly feel the effects of that pivot. Stopping that train moving at high velocity, takes time and great effort. To slow down decades of learned behaviour, no matter how badly we want to change, can’t happen all at once. It takes even longer to turn that train in a new direction.
Lasting change takes lots of work, lots of different exercises and scaffolding, titrating, lots of support, deep listening, and trial and error. Instead of struggling onward and chasing the next thing, opportunity is actually DRAWN TO YOU!
This work is deeply science-based, but goes back thousands of years and was simply the way of being of indigenous and ancient cultures around the globe.
This work is a remembering, therefore we have the capacity to return to it.
My eternal appreciation to my teacher, soul sister, guide, and friend – Mal/Prem – you are firmly a part of the ripple effect of somatic justice and reunion. Thanks for your experience and encouragement to move from a place of physical knowing, to stay curious, and to be inclusive
Ummm... excuse me... so, what do you mean by "Somatics"?
The term somatics was coined by Thomas Hanna in the 1970s and derives from the Greek word somatikos which means living, aware, bodily person. (“The Art of Somatic Coaching” Richard Strozzi-Heckler). Body and brain are one rather than separate entities creating a whole being and fully embodied life.
It is an exploration that requires curiosity and deep listening to the sensations from within. Learning to foster an intimate connection between the brain/body relationship brings about our ability to heal ourselves. If we would only get out of our own way!
All that makes up you has been formed – and informed – by your years walking this earth, while in utero, and even generationally before your very conception. You can have thousands of X-rays and MRIs, a surgeon can poke around your organs and viscera, but no one except you can know what it feels like to move, breathe, and live your body.
The field of somatics found its western roots in the 1930s with student of Freud, Wilhelm Reich. He “posited that neurosis lived in the body and that by working directly on the body through touch, breath, and gesture it was possible to cure the patient and relieve them of their symptoms.” (“The Art of Somatic Coaching” Richard Strozzi-Heckler). Enter those who came to the field to heal themselves like Else Gindler (Sensory Awareness) and Moshe Feldenkrais (funsctional integration and the Feldenkrais Method).
Somatics has also been developed through the studies of Thomas Hanna (Clinical Somatic Exercises), psychotherapist Peter Levine (creator of Somatic Experiencing), psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (trauma expert), and physician Gabor Mate (trauma and addiction expert), among many others. Somatics began as a mental and physical therapy, as well as movement modalities, but is now reaching into the social justice sphere, spiritual systems, and beyond.
All of this “new” scientific understanding of self, our development, our relationship to the universe, and our very existence, was understood and contemplated well before this century. Since the beginning of humankind Indigenous communities, Asian and Mid-East cultures have been living an embodied life connected to the cosmos, spirit, and nature. A connection with all that is.
Our current paradigm of patriarchy and colonialism has done its best to stamp out this symbiotic way of being. Balance has been eradicated and as a result the earth and all that inhabit her are suffering and crying out for a course correction – or an eradication.
But hope is not lost. We are in a time of great change.
There is a collective realization that continuing in this direction isn’t sustainable and as more and more people move toward compassionate change, more healing becomes possible. Working from the body out to the world around us helps to create lasting and sustained change.
GUEST FACILITATORS
TIFFANY MACKENZIE (she/her)
LEE SCOTT (she/her)
Lee has been working as a fitness leader for more than 30 years. Known for her WoW Power Walking program which she created in 2002, she has brought fun, fitness, and marathon training to the pedestrian gait including speaking at fitness and health conferences across North America. Lee has taught all manner of fitness classes over the decades and, in addition to her walking classes, currently focuses on leading strength workouts, yoga & meditation practices livestream. Originally certified as a group fitness leader in 1992, she has been a certified personal trainer and health coach with the American Council of exercise since 2001. Since 2013, she has completed more than 1,000 hours of yoga teacher training. Lee is co-author of The Walking Solution (Human Kinetics, 2020) and author of Step Outside (Plumleaf Press) to be published in 2024.
NORMANDO JONES (he/him)
Normando is a Soundscape Creator/Sound Healer that transforms the world of yoga into an enticing experience using hand drums, didgeridoo, synthesizers, and exotic instruments.
Normando says “Rhythm is the foundation of life, melody is the song of the spirit, and movement binds them together.”
The wonderful healing benefits of Normando’s music creates a transcendence, seducing the heart, awakening the soul to the preciousness of being human.
Normando has provided music for Lululemon, Lolë, Moksha, Yoga Vision, Power Yoga Canada, Yoga-Thon Dundas Square, Take it to the mat/Lymphoma Canada, and The Power of movement/Arthritis Canada.
TARA MhicCOINNIGH (she/her)
Tara is a Bhakti yoga kirtan singer, and Nada Yoga practitioner finds her essence in sacred sound.
Immersed in the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata, she embraces a daily mantra chanting practice that fuels her devotion.
Tara’s voice becomes a conduit for spiritual expression, evoking the essence of love and connection to the divine in every note she sings.
Her kirtan sessions transcend performance, inviting others on a soul journey of self-discovery.
With a heart full of dedication and an authentic voice, Tara guides those eager to explore Bhakti yoga’s profound practice through the transformative power of sacred sound.
