My name is Jenny Wade, I’m a therapist and healer, and the owner of Haven Yoga. I graduated from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology with a masters degree in counseling Psychology, and am a Rasa Yoga 200 hour teacher training graduate. My focus is using the somatic experience of the body to help tell our stories of harm, and to re-awaken the creativity and life force stored within the viscera of the body.

I am drawn towards this work because I have needed it to heal myself. I come from a lineage of frozen, quiet women who learned to swallow their truth in order to survive. In the system of my family and in the Evangelical church I was raised within: I was taught that my feelings were untrustworthy, and I got really good at pushing away any sensations of discomfort inside of myself. Because of this, my body was almost completely numb to me for most of my life. I viewed it as a shameful part of me to fix and corral, and I was caught in the cycle of seeing my body as a perpetual self-improvement project. It was never toned or disciplined enough, always too squishy. I viewed my body as an object for other people to enjoy or reject, and my self perception was caught up in how closely I could reflect the white, thin, beauty ideal.

The first time I had a different kind of experience in my body was in a yoga class. It was the first time I was invited to not perform for anyone, and to just let feeling what was present be enough. The rush of relief I felt was life changing, and I became addicted. I wanted more of that permission to be right where I was, both emotionally and physically. After graduating undergraduate school I did my 200 hour yoga teacher training, and then immediately entered graduate school for counseling psychology. I began having deeply healing experiences on my yoga mat, that felt similar to what I was experiencing in my therapists office. I intuitively knew there was an overlap between body - mind healing, but it wasn’t being addressed in my formal learning environment so I sought it out everywhere I could. I read voraciously about how trauma is stored in the body, and met with yoga teachers and body workers who taught me how the unconscious mind manifests within the systems of the body. I’ve learned both through my training and personal experience that unprocessed stories of harm from our own lives and the lives of our ancestors live within the physical body.

It is my life’s work to come home to myself and my body, and to guide other women into the disruptive and healing work of trusting the stories of the body. Our birthright is to feel fully safe, fully alive, and fully empowered.