Larissa has been working in the trauma-informed field since she started her career and didn't even realize it. Larissa links her background in education and law with movement and mindfulness and finds that this unique combination has helped her serve various populations in a trauma informed way over time. As both an educator and lawyer, Larissa has worked with diverse populations across NYC, Newark, NJ, and Washington DC, early in her career where she invited families to take mindful breaks using breathwork techniques, and guided juveniles to use other modalities to handle grief, stress and more while awaiting next steps in their trial process.
After leaving NJ/NY area, she maintained her passion for Education Law, Mental Health Law, and Accessibility to Education under the IDEA by becoming a special needs advocate and parent mentor with various diverse populations in the state of Pennsylvania through the Department of Health's Family Connections for Language and Learning.
Larissa is a Registered Adult Yoga Teacher (ERYT-500), Children's Yoga Teacher (RCYT), Prenatal Yoga Teacher (RPYT), and Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT). In each of these endeavors, Larissa has been using inclusive, accessible, trauma-informed tools to reach and teach students in various modalities all across the nation in schools, colleges, universities, various yoga studios, libraries, hospitals, community and recovery centers. She has trained with some of the foremost minds in the trauma-informed field from Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine to Gabor Mate and Hala Khouri. Larissa has enjoyed applying these tools to teaching in Higher Education across the state of PA and beyond. She is currently a teacher, trainer and content contributor with Childlight Education Company (NH), Mindful Child Initiative (PA), Prema Yoga Institute (NY) and The Yoga Loft of Bethlehem (PA). She is also the Director of Teacher Training and Family Programming at the Yoga Loft of Bethlehem. Her work has been featured in NPR, MSN, PBS News, WLVT Channel 39, PBS Kids, Lehigh Valley Style, Yoga Journal/Outside + and Yoga Love magazine. She has been the speaker at various national conferences from Trauma Sensitive Schools, EDHI, ASHA, COSEM and more. When she isn't sharing her love of trauma-informed work with all, she is a wife, mom of 3, professor, author, speaker, and lover of reading, gardening, and traveling.
Subject Matter Expertise:
Children’s Yoga
Trauma-Informed Yoga
Adaptive Yoga
Disability Advocacy
Trauma-Informed Yoga