Ground. Center. Lift. Rise Up.
You’re ready to get out of pain, aren’t you?
That’s why you’re here.
Me, too.
Let’s see if yoga therapy can help you return to your full, engaged life.
Yoga therapy is for active people who want to move more easily and efficiently doing the things that fulfill them—work, art, craft, hobby, sport.
You hold out hope that a stretch you learned recently is really going to take care of it—whatever your source of pain or suffering—this time. Alas, even as you feel it working, you also feel something else tugging somewhere else.
In yoga therapy, we might begin by exploring that stretch since it worked before, giving you an opportunity to become more adept at interpreting the signals your body is sending about what it needs. You’ll learn to make small adjustments that are specifically tailored to support an easeful return to a life you love.
Grounded in physical sensation, yoga therapy works by improving neuromuscular connections. It is straightforward and direct, but that doesn’t mean we won’t address the potential complexity of being in pain. We’ll approach your pain or discomfort with seriousness, but we’ll find ways to explore it with curiosity and maybe even a little playfulness. We’ll avoid meaningless yoga jargon and focus on how you can move through your own life with more ease.
It starts with learning how to interpret body language.
Your body—it’s where you live! It’s talking to you all the time, but you only got the basic phrase book, so sometimes it’s hard to understand what it’s saying.
Using the concepts and techniques of the ancient system for personal and cultural health and happiness called yoga, you’ll learn to engage your brain, body, and breath to:
identify uncoordinated movement
rebuild neural connections
retrain neuromuscular patterns
find internal and external support and sustenance
find your own peaceful range
When you learn the language your body uses to tell you what it needs, you can use your body’s cues to reduce or even eliminate pain.
You can make your body a sanctuary, a place you want to be every day.
When you feel safe in your own body,
you can feel safe in the world.
I’m Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer. I teach peace through movement, meditation, and massage.
For 30 years I worked primarily as a massage therapist, helping folks heal the hurts of life by applying pressure to muscles. I worked from an understanding of how movement and distress affect the muscles and what techniques to apply to relieve pain or tension from misuse or overuse. The tone of my practice was collaboration to create peace.
In 2017, after almost 40 years of practicing yoga, I finally began teaching. At first I taught from the perspective of the muscles: What’s stretching? What’s contracting? How do we modify a pose to get more or less of that?
But in March 2021 I started down the path of teaching folks to practice yoga therapeutically and began to see things from a deeper perspective, from the bones. How is that leg bone moving in the hip socket? That arm bone in the shoulder socket? The blade on the rib cage? The rib cage with the spine?
Nowadays, this dual perspective from the muscles and the bones is the core of my practice. I’m helping folks find enduring relief by teaching them how to move their bones in a more coordinated and peaceful manner and helping them get quick relief by teaching them techniques of simple self-massage. I’ve found the tactile feedback from one’s own hands about the state of one’s own body enhances the feedback loop from brain to nerve to muscle to bone and back. Don’t worry: I still recommend folks receive massage from others—professional or family—to enjoy the experience of being soothed and cared for, even for just an hour, every so often.
I’ve also worked as a freelance scientific and technical editor, and from 2001 to 2011, I taught English composition to first-year college students. All the skills I learned doing that work have come together to support this new way I’m collaborating with individuals to create peace.
I am committed to helping you get back to the activities that not only fuel your fire but also bring you peace.
As a result of yoga therapy, my students are moving through life more peacefully. Practically speaking, that looks like:
the potter who learned a way to do her craft without activating an old injury
the movement instructor who found relief from her chronic hip and shoulder pain
the designer who no longer contends with back pain while sitting at her desk all day
the marathoner who recovered her balance after abdominal surgery
the filmmaker who found new focus for a new project
Find a solution to your pain.
1:1 Personalized Yoga Therapy
The best way to see if yoga therapy is right for you is to sample a session. Give yourself 75 minutes to begin to move with more ease.
Partner with a certified yoga therapist to uncover factors that are hindering your wellbeing.
Learn movements and techniques to address your immediate physical issue.
Explore therapeutic practices to help you become more mindful, bodiful, and soulful.
Implement changes so you feel more connected to yourself and your body.
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$210 for the foundational session
This private, introductory experience also includes access to the Be Bodiful video library to help support your practice. Videos include Home Massage 100: Routines for Self Care, an online course valued at $168, as well as practice videos tailored to the specific movements your body needs now.
What’s the difference between
yoga therapy and private yoga lessons?
Yoga therapy sessions aren’t just private yoga lessons where the teacher decides what poses to teach and the student learns to do those poses that way. Rather, you learn to apply the principles and techniques of yoga to reduce or eliminate a problem you’re having. That problem could be physical pain, mental strain, emotional upset, or social disconnection.
The approach. Using movement, stillness, and breath, we discover where your movement is uncoordinated and chaotic, and we reduce the movement to its component parts so you can move in a range that’s coordinated and peaceful. That allows the tissue an opportunity to heal (if necessary) and gives the brain, nerves, muscles, and bones an opportunity to improve communication so that muscles that should fire do fire and muscles that shouldn’t fire don’t. We foster that communication working in the context of nonviolence, truthfulness, and compassion: Don’t hurt yourself, don’t lie to yourself about how much range you have, love yourself enough to move in your true pain-free range, and don’t judge that range as good or bad.
The result. You learn to become aware of internal chatter that sometimes keeps you from paying attention to the early cues that indicate you’re moving beyond that peaceful range. You learn to create a feeling of safety and trust in your own body because you learn to notice and respond to the signals your body is giving. Using movement, stillness, and breath, you’ll find peace in body, mind, soul, and spirit.
A typical session. Every yoga therapy session is unique and student-based. Sessions begin with a discussion about what went well and what didn’t since our last visit. We then settle into the practice with a body scan and a review of the movements from your previous session. We’ll make adjustments as necessary and then practice one or two new movements until you understand how they will support you. Towards the end of the session, we’ll wind down with a second body scan then summarize the session.
See if yoga therapy would support you.
Yoga therapy works best with a commitment to at least one series of sessions, so I offer a singular session to give you a sense of what it’s all about. I invite you to experience my style and see if yoga therapy would support you at this time in your life.
STUDENT TESTIMONIAL
“This yoga has turned out to be transformational.”
“This course has really been a gift to myself which is not the way the story started. Yoga is good. I should do yoga. But this yoga has turned out to be transformational. Lesley Ann is very intentional and very specific making sure my positioning is correctly aligned, allowing me to move and breathe properly while working on my body’s issues. After just my first session this course had already paid for itself by tackling some longstanding pain issues that she was able to remediate by showing me the movements and positions needed as an antidote. Tools for a lifetime…. And that was just the beginning!”
— VE
Touch the pain of the world as real, and release hope into the darkness.
—Simone Campbell, Sisters of Social Service, citing Walter Brueggemann
Common Questions
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I’m thrilled to work with a variety of people, but they tend to have the common pursuit of making or appreciating beautiful things—for work or hobby—and are struggling to do so because of pain. Perhaps you write, paint, or throw pots. You might play an instrument or dance. Are you a crafter? Or do you appreciate the beauty of the natural world? And is pain holding you back from doing what you love?
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Not a problem. Yoga therapy is beneficial for all levels of experience — from the beginner to the longtime practitioner. We’ll work within your own peaceful range, letting all the various parts of you learn to coordinate your movement through life.
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It’s best to come with a medium issue (on a minor to major scale), something that keeps you from doing all you would like to do but not something that requires medical intervention (although it’s fine to be seeing a medical practitioner at the same time). It could be recurring or chronic pain, thinking or behavior that’s detrimental to your wellbeing, or feeling like you can’t find a rhythm with a personal or professional project.
But more than anything, it’s best to come with a spirit of exploration and discovery, a desire to learn how the concepts and techniques of an ancient system for personal and cultural health and happiness can help you find and live as the best version of yourself / your Self. -
For the first month, we’ll meet weekly to help your system integrate the new movement patterns. After that we’ll determine how frequently we should schedule your sessions. And I’m always only an email away.
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You’ll have access to your own private space in the Be Bodiful online studio where you’ll find homework instructions, recordings of our sessions, and additional yoga and massage videos to guide you through the concepts and techniques we discuss in your sessions. And again, I’m only an email away.
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Be Bodiful is a space where people can gather to practice somatic, simple, and serious yoga, meditation, and massage, individually and in small groups.
Simple: I love a good challenge in any aspect of life, but I find I do better dealing with those challenges by maintaining a steady, disciplined approach to my yoga: doing fewer poses, moving with the breath, pausing between poses or sequences.
Somatic: I’m a pretty earthbound creature. I recognize and experience all the many mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits of yoga, but my entry into those nonphysical realms is always from the body: Get grounded. Get centered. Get lifted. From those actions, we can also improve thought, mood, and connection to others. I do use a lot of imagistic language to cue the movements.
Serious: Getting benefit from yoga, meditation, and massage takes discipline. You don’t have to become a yogi, but you do need to dedicate some time every day for practice, even if all you can manage is 15 minutes.
If this sounds like your style, too, let’s chat.
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Explore free yoga videos.
Do you want to gently explore the practice of yoga in the comfort of your own space? I offer videos that introduce you to foundations of yoga therapy while giving you the opportunity to experience my approach and teaching style. For beginners and long-time practitioners alike.
Free. -
Join a weekday meditation.
Sometimes a meditative reset is just what we need to reconnect with our bodies, our spirits, and others. Join our group a few times week for a 20-minute meditation. You are welcome to participate regularly or drop in occasionally. These sessions provide students with nourishment and community. Free.
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Learn massage at home.
Would you like to feel the way you feel after a massage on you own, anytime? My online massage courses teach specific techniques and sequences so that you can help yourself (and/or your friends or family members) reduce or eliminate pain, improve body image, and feel more connected. $546 for the massage bundle.
WHAT YOGA THERAPY STUDENTS ARE SAYING
Are you ready to be bodiful?
Would you like to learn how to be bodiful? Just subscribe to my monthly-ish newsletter down below. As a thank you, you’ll get access to a seven-minute body scan you can do right at your desk at the beginning or end your work day, or any time in between.
Join the Be Bodiful community.
My invitation to you.
I won’t share your personal information.