8 Yoga Teachers Who Focus on Neurodiversity & Mental Health
Earlier this year Accessible Yoga launched an incredible virtual workshop series, Neurodiversity, Mental Health & Yoga: Cultivating Welcoming Practices & Communities. This is such an important topic, and I wasn’t really seeing it addressed in this way—part online course, part conference-style—in the broader yoga community.
It is estimated that 1 in 5 people around the world are neurodivergent, and nearly 50% of adults will be diagnosed with a mental health challenge at some point in their lives.
To address these topics, we were so honored to assemble a faculty of amazing teachers who also identify as neurodivergent and/or as someone who experiences mental health challenges. In the course, through sharing neuro-inclusive yoga practices, education, and resources, each presenter offered their expertise on how to create welcoming and inclusive yoga communities.
Here, we wanted to uplift the presenters who made this program so special and link to their offerings. If you’d like to explore our online course, Neurodiversity, Mental Health & Yoga, it’s now available on demand! (Tiered pricing and partial scholarships are offered.) Learn more and start today.
8 yoga teachers who focus on neurodiversity & mental health in their offerings
Candice Baldwin
Workshop: "De-Ableize" Your Yoga Practice & Teaching: Yoga for Neurodiverse Folx
Candice’s natural curiosity about their own healing from injuries and trauma lead her to 20+ year yoga practice. This enthusiasm to learn and serve others on their healing journey lead them to pursue their life as a yoga teacher, yoga therapist and educator, while their African ancestry, queerness and autism has made them passionate about calling in the BIPOC, queer and neurodiverse communities.
Candice (any/all pronouns) is a 500 RYT, 200hr Himalayan Kriya Yoga teacher, Swing Yoga teacher, and was certified as a Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT) in 2019.
Candice’s approach in yoga therapy and education is building a practice and educational environment around the needs of the people they serve, working with blind and partially sighted peoples, neurodivergence folx, 50+ population and people living with injuries, trauma, and chronic illness; delivered through the lens of decolonization.
Connect with Candice and check out their upcoming offerings:
www.vidyatherapeuticyoga.ca
@VidyaTherapeuticYoga
Becky Aten
Workshop: Embracing Neurodivergent Joy Through Yoga
Becky Aten (they/she) is an openly neuroqueer yoga practitioner, human resources professional, neurodiversity advocate, and a community space-holder and bridge-builder for the Neurodivergent community. Through their Yoga for Neurodiversity project, Becky is on a mission to help fellow neurodivergent folks to feel seen, valued, and safe to embrace their differences through the practice of yoga.
Becky is passionate about cultivating welcoming, affirming, and neuro-inclusive environments that honor each individual’s experiences and intersecting identities.
Becky lives in Racine, Wisconsin— the ancestral lands of the Peoria, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk peoples, among others. They enjoy having a bit of a rebellious spirit, exploring forested hiking trails, petting moss (and dogs), getting nerdy with science and sci-fi, and playing tabletop games.
Connect with Becky and check out their upcoming offerings:
www.yogaforneurodiversity.com
@Yoga_For_Neurodiversity
Isazela "Zel" Amanzi
Workshop: Neurodivergence, Mental Health, & the Kleshas
Isazela "Zel" Amanzi (They/He), M.S.Ed, CYT is a Blacqueer, neuroqueer, agender transbeing, sacred energy educator, facilitator, speaker, and writer.
With formal and community training in social justice education, child development, western Reiki, and tantric yoga, he centers his practices and teachings on the intersections of disability justice, neurodiversity, ancestral connection, energy work, somatic inquiry, personal transformation & counter-colonial community-building at the margins.
Zel is also a poet, a gardener, and an analog enthusiast. They are a co-founder of Trans Futures Collective and meditation and sound practitioner with Cuties LA.
You can join their public classes, or hire him for private sessions and consulting.
Connect with Zel and check out their upcoming offerings:
www.transgressivemedicine.co
@TransgressiveMedicine
zelamanzi.substack.com
Alexia Walker
Workshop: Trauma and Neurodivergence: Bridging Understanding & Practice
Alexia Walker (she/her) is a trauma-informed yoga instructor dedicated to creating inclusive and neuroaffirming spaces.
With a deep commitment to advocacy and education, her work inspires conversations that challenge conventional beliefs about adaptability, safety, and inclusion for both teachers and students of yoga.
Connect with Alexia and check out her upcoming offerings:
www.speaklovetoher.com
@SpeakLoveToHer
Brooke West
Workshop: Mad Yoga and A Call To Action: Mental Health, Spiritual Awakening & Peer Support During Global Crisis
Brooke West BSc, C-IAYT (they/she), has been teaching trauma-sensitive restorative yoga and meditation in the Kriya Yoga tradition since 2005. Brooke favors rest- and relaxation-based practices, ayurveda, mysticism, psychology and 12 Step recovery principles to promote introspective healing for herself and for her students impacted by diagnoses and spiritual awakening processes.
Brooke is a mental health consumer and psychiatric survivor. They provide yoga therapy and mentorship both online and in person.
Brooke is the creator of the Mad Yoga Network, offering peer support to and from yoga practitioners who have had mental health and spiritual emergence experiences. Water lover, comedy fan, florist, and astrologer, Brooke supports cross-movement solidarity and conjures practical magic on the Washoe shores of Da Ow Aga, colonized as Lake Tahoe, California. Brooke is grateful for the privilege of dreaming-in a new, peaceful world with access to Yoga, Spirit, Water and Light.
Connect with Brooke and check out their upcoming offerings:
www.BrookeWestYoga.com
@BrookeWestYoga
BrookeWestYoga.Substack.com
www.MadYogaNetwork.com
Kendra Coupland
Workshop: Tantric Pedagogies: Teachings from the Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam to Support in Times of Contraction
Kendra Coupland (she/her) is a Yoga Grandmaster, who was initiated into the yogic tradition by Swami Vidyanand in 2017 while residing in Tamil Nadu, India. As a queer, neurodivergent yoga teacher, survivor of sexual violence, and person of mixed Afro-Caribbean and Romani-Hungarian heritage, Kendra brings a compassionate, trauma-informed, and intersectional framework to her practice.
Her body of work includes creating programming for survivors of sexual violence at UBC and Capilano University; she is the founder of Spiritual Wellness for Black Bodies and the Dark Before the Dawn retreat for Black community healing; and she teaches a free trauma-informed, drop-in yoga class three times a week for the general public at The Gathering Place Community Centre.
Her aim is to create safer spaces for folks who experience marginalization and systemic violence to practice self-liberation within the yogic community.
Connect with Kendra and check out her upcoming offerings:
www.kendracoupland.com
@kendracoupland
Ekta Hattangady
Workshop: Decolonizing Mental Health: Expansive Perspectives of Neurodiversity
Ekta (they/she) is a social worker, private practice psychotherapist, mindfulness trainer, and coach. They have 16+ years of experience of working in the non-profit space in clinical and program roles across India, the US and Canada.
Ekta is passionate about liberation - from worldly systems, internal barriers, and other oppressive components that keep us captive. Born and raised in India in a Hindu-Jain family, Ekta is on a journey to reclaim their ancestral practices while dismantling oppressive systems like casteism, white supremacy, and capitalism. They began their journey with yoga and ayurveda as a way of life as taught by their mother. They practiced Vipassana for several years and are currently studying Tibetan Tantra and pursuing Buddhist chaplaincy.
Ekta identifies as neurodivergent and approaches their well-being and professional practice from a depathologizing lens.
Connect with Ekta and check out their upcoming offerings:
unitymindfulness.com
@journeywithcompassion
Theo Wildcroft
Workshop: From Eugenics to Theories of Mind: How to Understand the Bigger Picture of Neurodivergence and Be Better Allies Together
Theo Wildcroft (she/her), PhD is a teacher, trainer, writer and scholar working for a more sustainable relationship between our many selves, the communities that hold us, and the world that nourishes us.
Her research considers the democratization of yoga post-lineage, and meaning-making in grassroots communities of practice. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK, former Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, editor of the BASR Bulletin, and the author of Post-Lineage Yoga (From Guru to #MeToo), and co-editor of recently released The Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide: Social Justice, Science, Politics, and Power.
She also happens to be AuDHD and a fierce advocate for disability awareness and radical accessibility.
Connect with Theo and check out her upcoming offerings:
www.theowildcroft.com
@theodorawildcroft
Start Exploring Yoga, Neurodiversity & Mental Health Now
Yoga, Neurodiversity, & Mental Health is an 8-part on-demand workshop series highlights and celebrates neurodiversity as an important example of human diversity and expansiveness, and reflect on the intersection of neurodiversity, mental health, and yoga. Expect discussion, resources, practice, and community building!
Pricing tiers & partial scholarships are available.
