ABOUT ME

My name is Barbara (she/her), I am a certified yoga therapist, and I love yoga! I started practicing it the mid 1990s while in grad school. I was struggling with a long-standing running injury and a new case of forearm tendonitis, and another student told me that yoga could help. I tried it, and I was hooked.

Although I began practicing yoga for physical reasons, over time I realized its mental and emotional benefits, especially when it came to my life-long struggles with stress and anxiety. My running injury and forearm tendonitis also improved over time, but it wasn't from the rigorous, push-my-body-to-the-limit approach to yoga that I took during my first few years of practice. Rather, my body eventually began to heal when I realized that it needed a slower, gentler, and more mindful approach to physical movement, as well as an increased focus on subtle breathing, meditation, self-compassion, and the cultivation of embodied awareness.

My love of yoga led me to begin teaching it in the early 2000s. Early on, I focused on children, as I wanted young kids to have the strategies for cultivating emotional wellbeing that I wished I had when I was their age. My commitment to working with youth and families became even stronger when I became a parent through adoption. I realized--especially through personal experience--that yoga and mindfulness could help meet the trauma-related needs of adopted children, the attachment needs of adoptive families, and the self-care needs of parents and caregivers. In 2013, I founded Tree Frog Kids Yoga (now Barbara Ley Yoga), and since then I have taught yoga and mindfulness to children and families in studios, schools, health care settings, community organizations, and online. My teaching approach emphasizes the use of play, movement, and imagination as vehicles for fostering self-empowerment, embodied and emotional awareness, physical health, emotional regulation, and connection with self and others.

More recently, I have expanded my teaching to college students and the general adult population. I primarily teach yoga that emphasizes gentle movement, embodied awareness, and self-compassion. My teaching style has been particularly influenced by Hatha, Vinyasa, Viniyoga, Restorative, and various adaptive, trauma-sensitive, and mindfulness approaches.

In my other professional life, I am an associate professor in the Department of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, where I teach and conduct research on topics related to the culture, politics, and practice of yoga, mindfulness, and trauma-informed care. Check out my Blog, Publications, and Research pages to learn more about this work.

I received my PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz, my 300-hour YTT through My Vinyasa Practice, my 200-hour YTT through The Light Within Yoga, and my 95-hour Children's Yoga certification through ChildLight Education Company. I have received additional certifications through Creative Relaxation and Yoga Ed., and I have completed other trainings through Transformation Yoga Project, Street Yoga, Every Kids Yoga, Global Family Yoga, Yoga4Classrooms, and Mindful Schools. In 2018, I became a certified Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) practitioner through Texas Christian University, and I integrate TBRI’s trauma-informed care principles into my yoga and mindfulness work with children, caregivers, and families. I am also currently enrolled in My Vinyasa Practice's clinical yoga therapy program, with the goal of becoming a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT) by the end of 2023.

I live in Newark, Delaware (the ancestral homeland of the Lenni Lenape tribe) with my husband and two sons. In addition to yoga, I love walking and hiking, strength training, sitting on my screened in patio, gardening (a new skill!), traveling, peppermint tea, and dark chocolate.