Two years ago I built something I wish had existed when I was doing my own healing work.

I was working with women in 1:1 somatic yoga therapy sessions and watching something happen between our appointments — they were doing profound, life-changing work in the room with me (in person and online) and then going home to nothing. No place to practice what we were discovering together. No curated resources that wove the nervous system work, the emotional tending, the somatic movement and the breathwork into one intentional space.

Generic online yoga studios weren't the answer. Bulk class libraries with no therapeutic intention behind them weren't what these women needed. They needed something specific. Something that understood that a woman processing childhood trauma needs a different practice than a woman working on her core strength — even if both are doing yoga.

And it needed to be bite-sized. I'm a busy mom of three. My clients are busy women navigating real lives. A 75-minute class you never get to is worth nothing. A 15-minute practice you actually do — over and over, week after week — changes everything.

So I built it.

One practice at a time over the past two years until we reached 160 and counting. Each one crafted with specific therapeutic intention. Each one designed to fit into a real life. Each one pointing toward the same destination — a woman who feels more at home in herself than she did before she pressed play.

But I also built it because I needed it once.

In the years when I was finding my way back to my own body — navigating childhood trauma, religious shame, the relationship at 14 that took years to name — I needed exactly this kind of space. A devotional home for my practice. A place to return to again and again. Something that held me steady when life didn't.

Yoga had already changed everything for me. It was the first place I had ever felt — even briefly, even imperfectly — what it was like to be safe inside my own skin. But what I needed wasn't just a yoga class. I needed a space that understood the whole of me. That knew my nervous system needed tending. That honored the connection between my body, my emotions, my spirit and my life.

That space didn't exist. So seventeen years later I built it.

What two years has taught me:

The women who thrive inside the Sanctuary are not the ones who practice perfectly. They're the ones who keep coming back.

The woman who does fifteen minutes on a Tuesday when the kids are finally asleep. The woman who plays a meditation practice in her car before a hard conversation. The woman who rolls out her mat on a Sunday morning not because she has to but because something in her body knows it needs it.

Consistency doesn't look like discipline in this space. It looks like devotion. And devotion — practiced in small sacred doses — is what actually changes a nervous system, heals a body and brings a woman home to herself.

Over the past two years I've watched women arrive exhausted, disconnected and stuck in their heads — and gradually, through practice after practice, begin to soften. To trust themselves more. To feel things they had been protecting themselves from feeling. To recognize that their body was never the enemy. It was always trying to bring them home.

I've also listened. When women told me they struggled to practice consistently at home I built a monthly practice calendar — three practices per week, one meditation and one breathwork practice repeated all month so the body has time to actually integrate, plus the two live Candlelight gatherings that have become the heartbeat of the whole community.

Because structure isn't the enemy of freedom. For a woman whose nervous system grew up in unpredictability — structure is actually one of the most healing things I can offer her.

Who the Sanctuary is really for:

In the beginning I described my ideal member in broad strokes. A self-aware woman who wanted to feel more at home in her body. That's still true.

But two years in I can be more specific. More honest.

The Sanctuary is for women who grew up learning that their bodies weren't safe. Women who experienced childhood trauma, religious shame, sexual abuse or the kind of relational wounding that taught them to leave themselves in order to survive. Women who built beautiful, capable, high-functioning lives on the outside while something underneath stayed quietly disconnected.

Women who have done the therapy. Read the books. Journaled. Meditated with an app that never quite touched it. And who still feel like something essential is just out of reach.

The gap between knowing and feeling it — that's what the Sanctuary exists to close.

Not through more information. Not through another course that asks her to analyze herself further. But through practice. Embodied, devotional, therapeutically intentional practice that speaks directly to her nervous system in the language it actually understands.
Movement. Breath. Stillness. Repetition. Safety. Return.

What's waiting for you inside:

160+ somatic yoga practices in 15-30 minute chunks — organized by what you need right now. Tightness in your hips. Anxiety in your chest. Grief you haven't named yet. A body that needs strengthening. A spirit that needs nourishing. A nervous system that needs to remember what safe feels like.

A monthly practice calendar that removes decision fatigue and gives you a simple, sustainable rhythm. One meditation practiced all month. One breathwork practice repeated until your body knows it by heart. Movement practices that shift and evolve through the weeks.

Two live Candlelight Restorative Yoga gatherings on Zoom each month — the first Tuesday and third Sunday. 75 minutes of deep rest, nervous system nourishment and the quiet magic of practicing alongside other women who are doing this work too. If you can't attend live the recording is always there waiting.

And something harder to put into words — a sense of belonging. Of not being alone in this. Of knowing that somewhere out there other women are pressing play on the same practices, returning to themselves in the same small devoted ways, finding their way back to their own bodies too.

Two years in — what I know for certain:

This work matters. Not as a wellness trend. Not as self-care content. As genuine, life-changing, ripple-effect healing that touches every relationship a woman has — with herself, her body, her family, her life.

The woman who tends her nervous system consistently becomes calmer in conflict. More present with her children. More intimate with her partner. More trusting of herself. More willing to take up space. More able to receive what she actually deserves.

I have watched this happen again and again over two years. In the women who show up. In myself.
And I am just getting started.

Join us for our two year anniversary in May:

May is a special month inside the Sanctuary. We're celebrating two years of women showing up for themselves — and I'm opening the door wide for new members to join us.

Every time a member logs in and completes a practice in May her name is entered into our anniversary giveaway. The women who practice most consistently receive beautiful gifts — things that say you deserve to be nourished.

If you've been curious about the Sanctuary — if something in you has been quietly saying this is the kind of support I've been looking for — May is the most alive and beautiful time to walk through the door.
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$33/month. Cancel easily anytime. Your first practice is waiting.🕯️

If you've journaled, gone to therapy, done the reading and still feel like something isn't fully clicking into place — you're not missing more analysis. You're missing the other half of the equation. Most healing journeys focus heavily on the mind: understanding your patterns, gaining insight, developing self-awareness. And that work is genuinely valuable. But in somatic yoga therapy, we work with four pillars — body, mind, soul and life — and for most self-aware women, two of those pillars have barely been touched. When your body and soul are left out of the healing process, there will always be a gap between what you know and what you actually feel.

​This is the heart of what somatic yoga therapy addresses. Your body doesn't heal the way your mind does. It doesn't benefit from more talking, more analyzing or more storytelling. It heals through embodied experience — through movement, breath, nervous system regulation and what I call soul-led integration. When we bring all four pillars together, something shifts that no amount of insight alone can produce. The patterns that have felt wired in start to move. Your body finally catches up with everything your mind has already understood. That gap between knowing and embodying begins to close.

If this resonates and you're ready to experience this kind of healing in real time, I'd love to have you join me for Candlelight Restorative Yoga on Zoom. Twice a month, from your own home, in your coziest clothes — 75 minutes of nervous system nourishment, restorative practice and the kind of soul-led guidance that makes this work feel different from anything you've tried before. It's the most accessible doorway into this practice, and honestly? It might be the missing piece you've been looking for.
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Join us here -> Candlelight Restorative Yoga on Zoom

On Monday I told a group of women I'm guiding through group somatic yoga therapy that we were diving into "past self work."

And that this work the yoga, healing, all of it it's not just about feeling better or dredging up the past.
It's for your liberation, wholeness, freedom.

It's about reconnecting with yourSelf in a way that life...trauma...expectations slowly pulled you away from. 

And honestly, it's so you can have way more fun in this life.

If you've been around a while, you know that I rebranded to The Nourished Woman about a year ago. And if you don't know, The Nourished Woman isn't me...she's you, me and the vision you and I hold in our hearts of the women we already are and are undeniably becoming. 

After sharing this, the EMBODY ladies and I practiced.
Slow, intentional movement. 
Grounding into their feet, hips and bodies.

Feeling their strength, stability and power.
We worked with the root chakra, with safety and taking up space.

I guided them to use their voice, to make sound and let themselves be heard. 

There was laughter...real laughter the kind that feels unexpected in a room where you've also cried.  Even Snoop Dogg came up, because apparently he has a children's album now - my clients tell me, haha. 

And then we softened
Moved into stillness, bodies laid out loosely in the way that only do after a great yoga practice 
They breathed slow and all was quiet

Then into writing
About meeting parts of themselves that still carry things
The younger parts, the protective parts, the ones that learned how to survive

And then we shared. 
And this is the part that always get's me.
Because of the range...the depth...the humanity in the room.

One woman spoke about recovering from medical trauma.
Another about growing up with an addict mom who saw too much too early.
One shared the quiet excitement of apartment shopping for her very first place. 
Another spoke of the ache of wanting deeper friendships.
There were stories of sexual and emotional abuse. 
Of staying with the scared, lonely parts of yourself instead of abandoning them.
Of hitting your 40's and realizing...you don't know yourself anymore. 
Of seeing, in real time, just how deeply you love and cherish someone you lost. 

There were tears
And soft breaths
And long pauses
There were smiles too. 
And something you could feel shifting in the room...like weights being set down...one by one. 

And then they walked out.
Lighter, clearer, more connected.
With real grounded ways to move forward. 

That's the real magic of this work.
Not surface level.
Not aesthetic.
But women...coming home to themselves
Together. 

PS If you're interested in being part of this 6 week women's empowerment yoga program called EMBODY, I run it a couple of times per year. Sign up for emails with me to be notified of the next time it's offered. Sign up and get a free "Meditation for Women Who Think You're Bad at Meditation Guide," here: ​kerimarino.eo.page/meditationguide