Work with me
Over a decade of experience in the health and wellness fields has led me to develop my own alchemy of Eastern and Western approaches. I integrate spiritual traditions of mindfulness, yoga therapy, Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, with cutting-edge research in neuroscience, nutrition, nervous system regulation, somatic movement therapy, and depth psychology.
Scroll down to learn more about 1:1 support.
Follow links to group sessions:
nervous system regulation
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structural body alignment
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emotional embodiment
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nervous system regulation 〰️ structural body alignment 〰️ emotional embodiment 〰️
I believe that the key to well-being is connection: to ourselves and to others. Self-awareness, acceptance and access to personal joy spill over to fulfilling relationships.
Throughout my life, I accumulated an array of diverse trainings - navigating the complexities of my life, and trained in modalities that I found miraculous. I learned that when we are out of alignment with ourselves and our partners - our body, mind and spirit let us know. Sometimes it is with worry and anxiety. Sometimes it’s depression. Sometimes aches and pains. Sometimes anger and sadness. Our bodies and nervous systems communicate with us. You can become your own healer when you know how to listen for and properly support your physical and emotional needs. Every symptom, behavior, and belief makes sense if we slow down long enough to understand it.
I coach from lived experience. I spent my twenties and thirties overextending myself - serial entrepreneurship to burnout, complexities of motherhood, raising small children, depression, body image issues, childhood trauma, boundary violations, addiction, looming divorce to name a few. It’s been a ride to grasp what true self-care is. Have I figured it all out? Lol, no... I've learned a lot from my ups and downs and I am here to help you navigate yours.
If the following statements resonate with you, chances are we are a good fit.
You have been on a journey to regain health & wellbeing for a while.
Maybe you’ve been told it is all in your head, the lab tests are okay, or the findings don’t explain the fatigue, pain, or lack of joy you are feeling.
You are hurting in ways you can’t put your finger on.
You are willing to invest emotional resources to know more about what is eating you, be clear about what you haven’t made peace with, take responsibility for the parts of yourself you are driven to deny and be accountable for what may lay outside your awareness.
You want to explore the origins of your emotional patterns.
You are ready to identify and break through outdated repetitive patterns that lead to diminished relationships with yourself and others, compost anger, fear and pain in order to grow self compassion.
You are ready to let go of the belief that you are inadequate.
You know it is time to be honest with yourself about what shaped you, dust off the shelved hurts and spin the cobwebs of your wounds into gold for a more whole and treasured life.
How it works
Yoga therapy does not lend itself well to irregular sessions here and there. It takes time and dedication. The good news is: it is nothing short of life-changing to learn how to truly understand & support yourself.
Yoga therapy offers short-term solutions and long-term support. First you’ll learn an array of techniques (stretches, breathwork, meditation, kriyas) to manage and ease symptoms. Then, for long-term health - we learn the language of the body - what aches pains and anxieties mean, how to decode these signs your body sends you - asking for help before dis-ease unfolds. We weed out symptoms and dive into the root causes of ailments, to bring about lasting changes.
As a general guideline, three months are sufficient to lay the groundwork for healing to unfold. In this time you learn to manage symptoms on your own. To dive deeper, re-wire long-held patterns, and create lasting change takes longer. I work with most individuals for 5 months to a year.
Sessions 75-minutes via Zoom.
We meet every two weeks. On off weeks you are expected to learn from the community library.
There is daily homework - usually 10-20min practice.
Additional support in between sessions via email/Signal.
WHAT WE DO IN SESSION
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Two things are always on the menu:
Structural body alignment to relieve the central nervous system from overworking in the form of bracing, tightness, and left/right misalignment.
Somatic practices to relieve the autonomic nervous system and have your body respond with fight-flight-freeze when appropriate.
Each month is structured that there are three weeks of work (a session, course content, session) and one week of rest (yoga nidra, restorative breathwork, sound healing).
We then have a month-by-month plan, each month building on the skills learned in the previous months.
My intention by the end of our engagement to leave you, the client, at a beginning.
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In the first month, we work on training awareness to notice ways your body speaks to you.
We work on:postural alignment of the physical body
nervous system regulation and
establishing embodied safety.
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The focus of the month is optimizing digestion and elimination. Drawing parallels between metabolic function and nervous system dysregulation.
Nervous system education. Uncovering stress patterns, learning to spot when a default response is at play.
Techniques to interrupt sympathetic NS responses.
Upregulating activities for freeze response.
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We work on gaining emotional freedom of the energy body, discover and update outdated beliefs of the mind, and learn to witness it all without judgment.
Along the way, we discover more about you that is there to love and accept. The quieter the inner critic gets the more you’ll be driven to please none other than yourself.
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We introduce shadow work, and explore the origins of the emotional patterns uncovered in the month prior.
If called for this is where we would start a more advanced yoga bhavana practice.
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Upleveling daily practice.
Shame school.
Communication skills, non-violent communication, co-creative partnership commitments.
Re-evaluating where we are and focusing on particular needs.
INVESTMENT
10-SESSION / 5-MONTH CONTAINER: $1750 or $350/month
6-SESSION / 3-MONTH CONTAINER: $1050 or $350/month
Setting up a free intro call will help us determine the amount of time/sessions that are best for you.
Monthly containers include access to the Vandaland video and course library for a year ($108 value).
Single Sessions
Available to returning clients and group program participants in need of individual support.
Single Session $180 (75mins).
INTAKE PROCESS:
Please schedule a 20-minute intro call to see if we are a good fit. This is a no-pressure call, no obligation to work after we connect - It’s a vibe check as well as a short discussion about areas you seek help with.
If we are a good fit, I will send you an in-depth Intake Form. Once you complete the form, we schedule another, longer 60-minute call in which we discuss specifics from your intake.
*These two calls are complimentary and necessary to assess and discuss ways we can work together, and outline a plan that is doable for you and will work for me.
**Yoga therapy involves homework, usually about 10-20 mins per day. On the first call, we get on the same page about what that homework is.
Upcoming Groups:
MotherCircle
- 8-week program, meets in-person in Carbondale, CO
- held twice a year: in the fall & spring
- next scheduled Mar 7 - May 2 2024
- learn more here
Inner Circle - A Journey Home To Yourself
- 13-week virtual group
- group study, practice & integration
- scheduled annually
- learn more here
Other ways to work with me
The quickest route to healing is to join a group
Self-regulation is the foundation for healing, and co-regulation with others - being seen and witnessing others - is key to groundedness and comfort with the inevitable messiness of the human experience.
In My Toolbox
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Movement practices to add to your mornings or evenings.
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Guided meditations, non-sleep deep rest, tapping and more.
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I use somatic parts work technique, compassionate inquiry, and yoga bhavana to identify, embrace and break through outdated repetitive patterns and grow beyond our current skin.
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Integrative change work is a conversational change making technique that variety of evidence-based techniques from modalities like Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), tapping (EFT), and rapid self-hypnosis to change patterns and habits at the unconscious level. No hypnotic trance required! It is a very empowering tool that teaches you how to stay in the driver's seat and not get swept bayside with your emotions, nervous system state, phobias, or anxiety.
It works as well for adults as for children.
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Quick, easy & no-fuss recipes to support your body systems in need of extra support. Doing deep work requires large amounts of emotional energy for processing and understanding.
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Non-interventionist, nervous system-friendly restorative breathwork that trains your body to deeply rest.
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Small changes that lead to big results.
What people are saying
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"Thank you so much. Every time I meditate with you, I release and integrate so much profound work. Thank you so so so much. You have clearly done the work and I am so grateful. It feels like a miracle."
Ashby C.
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"Vanda has changed my life with her tactical logical hands on health coaching as well as her healing, loving vibration that helps settle my system to be my most blossomed self. She's it and that's that."
Mollie K.
FAQs
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Yoga Therapy is a powerful healing modality that examines imbalances present on multiple levels of existence - physical, energetic, mental, and spiritual. To address the imbalances yoga therapy uses movement, posture, breathwork, inquiry, mindfulness, and awareness exercises.
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It helps with physical and emotional discomfort, pain, mood regulation, and supports your physical and emotional needs ranging from back problems to emotional distress. Short term it can help cope with your particular dis-ease and long term it can address the root cause of the dis-ease. In our sessions, I tend to start with how to care for your body, mind and spirit with the most critical aspects of self-care: rest (active rest & sleep), nutrition & digestion, movement, and enjoying life.
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Yoga therapy is a modern application of the tools of yogic tradition to individual care. It integrates traditional yogic concepts and techniques with Western medical and psychological knowledge.
Whereas traditional Yoga is primarily concerned with personal transcendence of a healthy individual —> Yoga therapy aims at the holistic treatment of various kinds of psychological or somatic dysfunctions ranging from back problems to emotional distress.What both yoga therapy and the public yoga class yoga share, is an understanding of the human being as an integrated body-mind system, which functions optimally in a state of dynamic balance.
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Many come to yoga therapy thinking that being an advanced yogi is a prerequisite. The opposite is true! I find that the less you (think) you know the better! I like to compare yoga therapy home-work to brushing your teeth - its power is hidden in the small, unsexy, daily tasks that add up to have a big effect on your health.