Yoga Therapy
Natalie Sekowski
About Natalie Sekowski, C-IAYT
My goal is to help others with their healing and wellness goals through individualized yoga therapy. I often work one-on-one with individuals. It is also important to me to bring yoga & meditation classes to communities & individuals who would especially benefit from yoga therapy and would not otherwise have access. I work with folks of all ages, abilities, backgrounds, orientations and beliefs.
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My focus includes support around mental health (anxiety, depression), grief, chronic pain, aging (and learning to embrace living while we do this thing called life)! This is close to my heart as I have personally struggled with these in my own life. I feel there a connection, or weaving, within these different challenging experiences and layers.
I am especially experienced in working with older adults and seniors. My experience with yoga and meditation includes: individual (in-person and Zoom) clinical sessions, functional groups classes, community classes (in-person and Zoom), chair yoga, individual bedside yoga, mental health support (including those formerly incarcerated), memory care, and those with Alzheimers' disease. As a volunteer with hospice care, I also offer yoga to hospice patients and their clinical care teams.
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I see private yoga therapy clients online, and in-person in the San Francisco Bay Area. I teach online private and group yoga and meditation classes. I am also affiliated with True Nature in Rio Vista, CA.
Here is a little to share about my personal journey:
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My daily yoga practice along with positive relationships in my life are what continues to give me the inner growth, peace, nourishment, conviction and clarity to be able to show up everyday for myself and others. Practicing yoga therapy helped me to learn how to reduce stress, anxiety, depression and manage grief. Another wonderful gift of yoga is how it has helped repair and deepen relationships with my loved ones through empathy and compassion.
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Yoga Therapy has been a life line for me to help with my mental health! Stress, anxiety, panic attacks, overwhelm, and depression have been present in my life for many years, with stormy waves that come and go with the ebbs and flows of life. With my regular personal practice, study and support from my mentors, I have learned tools that support me, lift me up, steady and sustain me with self-care, empathy, compassion, patience, reflection, action, wisdom and love.
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Practicing Viniyoga helped eliminate & manage my chronic pain. Yoga has been a part of my life since 2001 and I started teaching Yoga in 2007 after my first yoga teacher training. But shortly after I started teaching, I experienced several injuries resulting in chronic pain which greatly affected the quality of my daily life. I found most regular yoga studio classes were not equipped to help and so I looked towards yoga therapy. I also wanted to continue my yoga studies by learning more about the depth of what yoga has to offer from its time tested practices. So I sought out trainings in the tradition of T Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar, also known as Viniyoga. Viniyoga is a classical and adaptive method of Yoga that is especially knowledgeable of how best to access and help each individual, meeting them where they are.
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Through deep love there also comes grief. Grief is a universal experience. It is loss, sadness, heartache, anger, trauma, vulnerability, and a lot of pain. And it is a reflection of how much we LOVE and CARE and DREAM. Through the loss of my father, I found a calling to support those in hospice care. It is a tender honor to connect with those who are dying, to support them by holding space for them, hold their hand in love and through pain during this final transition, to just sit, breathe, feel, talk, listen to music, sing and laugh together as they reflect on life, and however they are in the present with each breath. This is a time where life gets really real... where what really matters comes more and more in focus.
Grief also shows up in loss of circumstances, abilities, time and dreams. This we know all too well, especially as we age and shift through stages of life. Grief of all kinds can be tremendously hard work.
And yet somewhere in the folds of grief and practicing being present for the throws of life, there can also reveal an uncovering of beauty, awe, clarity, acceptance, grace, peace and even joy. Healing happens along the way. A friend shared with me her experience, "grief is learning a new place for love to go." And a new way for love to grow.
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This brings me to my purpose or my why... This, I am still discovering. And yet a growing drum beat I am feeling may be revealing... perhaps my purpose is to witness beauty in this life, in ALL OF IT. And, if I am lucky, to help others feel their why and witness the beauty of their world.
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Yoga Therapy Education:
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I am a certified Yoga Therapist as of 2019. My Yoga Therapy Training was an integrative in-depth 800 hour training with Yoga as Therapy North America (YATNA) in Nashville, TN (2014-2017), one of the first International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) accredited programs. As part of my training, I completed a two week clinical internship at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandarim (KYM) in Chennai, India (2018).
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I continue to study with my current mentor, Kate Holcombe, MA. I also study with (as well as help support) Optimal State and Amy Wheeler, Ph.D.
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My previous studies in Viniyoga includes the Healing Yoga Foundation 500 teacher training in San Francisco (2009-2012) and a month intensive at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandarim (KYM) in Chennai, India (2011).
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YATNA faculty were Chase Bossart, MA, Dolphi Wertenbaker, MD, and Amy Wheeler, Ph.D. The Healing Yoga Foundation teachers were Kate Holcombe, Chase Bossart, Todd Stellfox, Dolphi Wertenbaker and my mentor Marcel Allbritron, Ph.D. My first 200 hour teacher training was with Yolanda Bain at The Mindful Body, in San Francisco (2006). Complementary to yoga, I have attended workshops and trainings about the holistic nutrition and lifestyle teachings of Ayurveda medicine, a sister science of yoga, with Elizabeth Cunningham Bossart, MA.
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I also learn and grow with each student I have the privilege to work with and support! Please feel free to reach out to connect. I would love to hear from you.
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