Yoga Training and Experience

    Heather is a EYT500hr-RYT500 hour advanced Hatha Yoga teacher registered with the Yoga Alliance and has been practicing and teaching yoga for the past 19 years.  She teaches yoga classes, workshops and at yoga Ttacher training's  (teaching yoga to individuals who are studying to be yoga teachers).   She is also a registered Prenatal Yoga teacher (RPYT)

    Heather’s training ranges from mentorships to formal yoga teacher training's in Hatha Yoga and various specialties.  Heather has experience teaching  and studying in the following specialty areas:

Hatha Yoga

restorative yoga

yoga programs and classes for athletes,

yoga therapeutics

Prenatal Yoga

postnatal yoga

yoga for Birth and delivery

Mom and Baby Yoga

Yoga for Cyclists

General Yoga classes

meditation and Breathwork

   

    Heather has taught classes  at Yoga Now and at the Yoga Now Teacher Training.  She has facilitated and taught workshops through Body, Mind and Spirit, Inspired birthing for families, The Albuquerque Birth Network, Topahkal Health Collaborative and Fiesta de la Salud.  Recently, she was selected by The Albuquerque Journal to appear in and contribute to an article about Prenatal Yoga.  She has been teaching at High Desert Yoga for the past eight years and also teaches at the High Desert Yoga Teaching Training.

    She also has developed many individualized yoga plans for people with such concerns as bulging/herniated disks, recovery from back surgery, Professional athletic performance, anxiety and stress release as well as recovery from repetitive use injuries.

    Heather founded and is executive director of Community Yoga Albuquerque, which offers yoga classes at homeless shelters, prisons and other areas of needs.  Current and past sites have included:  The Safe House, Southwest Creations, Cesar Chavez Community Center, North Valley Senior Center, EPC and The Youth Diagnostic and Development Center a detention center for adolescents and Citizens Schools.

Related Background and non-yoga Training

Heather’s strong desire to teach yoga therapeutically and work in healthcare led her to pursue a Doctor of Oriental Medicine degree.  She will integrate her yoga teaching with Eastern medicine when she begins to practice in 2012.  She has studied medicinal herbs, nutrition and food therapy as well as cleansing programs . The future Dr. Farrell hopes to teach her patients to  ‘cure’ themselves through the healthcare tools she will provide.

Heather has training in birthing and labor support.  She serves on the Board of Directors of the Albuquerque Birth Network.  She also teaches a Yogic based Childbirth education class for birth and delivery.  She has been a student doula in Inspired Birth and Families Doula Program.

She also is trained in Pilates Mat Training through Momentum Studios in Albuquerque, NM.  She incorporates pilates principles into applicable yoga programs. 

In the past, she has worked as a VISTA Volunteer, Social worker with homeless families and children as well as inner city populations. During that same time period she worked as an elementary teacher and literary specialist in an inner city school.  This strong interest in working with under-served populations led her to found Community Yoga Albuquerque in 2004.

She spends a lot of time riding, training and racing her bicycle in the rocky mountain region. This has greatly contributed to her ability to teach and therapeutically work with athletes of all levels.

Besides studying and teaching yoga, Heather enjoys hiking in the mountains (the higher altitude the better!!), riding and racing bicycles, Belly dancing, traveling, studying language and spending time with her family of people and dogs.

This website was developed with the hope of providing a means to make connections between yoga and the healthcare sector as well as serve as a means of resource for the  community. 

“It is the shelter of each other that the people live”