YogaX:
Science Meets Soul
YogaX champions therapeutic yoga through the integration of ancient wisdoms with science-based knowledge and evidence-based practice. The YogaX at Stanford Psychiatry passion for integrated holistic yoga fuels a mission: to inspire, support, and implement science-informed and wisdom-based yoga education, training, and services, dedicated to nurturing the wellbeing of individuals and entire communities.
“Our vision of yoga is one of inclusiveness, access, diversity, health, wellbeing, and resilience for all. Ours is a yoga of integration that honors the mind as much as the body, the breath as much as the calming of the nervous system, stillness as much as movement, and effort as much as ease.”
-Dr. Christiane Brems, PhD, ABPP, ERTY500, C-IAYT - YogaX Director
The YogaX Team
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Christiane Brems (She/Her)
PhD, ABPP, E-RYT500, C-IAYT
Clinical Professor, YogaX Founding Director
Dr. Brems integrates yoga, mindfulness, breathwork, and imagery in her work as a psychologist, teacher, researcher, mentor, supervisor, consultant, author, administrator, and service provider. As an integrated holistic yoga teacher and therapist, she incorporates all eight limbs of yoga; honors trauma-sensitive teaching practices; and cultural sensitivity, inclusivity, and humility. She encourages individual tailoring of yoga to contexts and needs of each practitioner, offering variations and adaptations that make yoga accessible to all.
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Geno Carvalho (He/Him)
MPH, E-RYT500, CPT, FNTP, NBC-HWC
Geno is an experienced health educator working in clinical settings integrating yoga services with exercise and nutrition protocols for disease prevention, injury rehabilitation, and pain management. He is a community health educator working to address health equity through coalition building and policy innovation. This is aimed to increase access to integrative care and building capacity in communities to empower people to proactively embrace a healthy life informed by the collective experiences of the community.
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Xin 'Melody' Liu (She/Her)
MBA, RYT200
YogaX Program Coordinator
Melody is a therapeutic yoga practitioner with a background in psychology research and business. She believes well-being begins when we turn inward and recognize we are already whole and enough. What we find within, we carry to our community as compassion and joy. Drawing from Integrated Holistic Yoga and mind-body science, she offers an integrative approach that weaves together breath work, contemplative practice, and lifestyle medicine. At YogaX, she provides student and community support, teaching, and mentorship
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Rebecca Volino Robinson (She/Her)
PhD, E-RYT200, RYT-500, IAYT-Q
YogaX Lead Teacher, 200hr YTT
Dr. Robinson is a licensed psychologist and therapeutic yoga teacher based in Anchorage, Alaska. She is a lead teacher for the YogaX 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, which prepares students to bring Integrated Holistic Yoga into healthcare and community settings. Trained in the Integrated Holistic Yoga paradigm, Dr. Robinson teaches with a somatic focus, using slow, exploratory movement and interoceptive awareness to support students in developing self-sovereignty and trust in their embodied experience on the mat and in their lives. Her clinical interests include contemplative and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies and integrative approaches to mind-body health.
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Valentina Anania
E-RYT200, RYT500
YogaX Lead Teacher, 200hr YTT
Valentina is a therapeutic yoga teacher currently teaching across clinical, community, and educational settings. She believes that yoga is most powerful when it is relational, invitational, rooted in care and grounded in evidence‑based principles that support nervous system regulation, agency, and embodied healing. As an architect with a focus on anthropology, she has spent many years observing and studying the relationships between people and understanding how human experiences are shaped by interaction with natural and artificial environments, the others and the self. She brings this multidisciplinary lens shaping her passion for designing practices that honor the full spectrum of the human experience.
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Malini Srikanth
RYT500, NBC-HWC
YogaX Lead Teacher, 200hr YTT
Malini is a coach, systems practitioner, and therapeutic yoga teacher whose work integrates Integrated Holistic Yoga, contemplative practice, leadership, community dialogue, and organizational transformation. As a lead teacher in the YogaX 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, she helps prepare students to bring Integrated Holistic Yoga into healthcare and community-based settings. Her teaching is grounded in Integrated Holistic Yoga as taught by Dr. Christiane Brems, with an emphasis on trauma-sensitive practice, mindfulness, embodied awareness, and adapting yoga to each individual’s needs. She emphasizes mind-body health, community practice, and organizational wellbeing.
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Vanika Chawla (she/her)
MD, FRCPC, RYT500
Dr. Vanika Chawla is a psychiatrist and yoga teacher with an interest in holistic modalities for health and healing. She has a longstanding dream to integrate the teachings and wisdom of yoga with modern health care. Clinically, she integrates therapeutic yoga, along with other lifestyle modalities into her work with patients. She is passionate about providing trauma informed, patient centered and culturally contexualized care. At YogaX she will provide teaching and mentorship related to yoga and lifestyle medicine.
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Heather Freeman (She/Her)
PsyD, E-RYT500
Dr. Freeman has extensive yoga and clinical experience. She has led yoga classes, workshops, and trainings in studios, community centers, community mental health settings, on college campuses, in a psychiatric hospital, and a prison. She synthesizes the ancient wisdom of yoga teachings with modern psychology and neuroscience to make the teachings accessible. Her styles aim to help individuals cultivate curiosity and accept what it is to be changing, growing, and evolving human beings
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Lauren Justice (She/Her)
PhD, E-RYT500
Dr. Justice is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Hood River, OR. She offers individual and couples counseling along with therapeutic yoga. It is her joy to share the many ways through which yoga can foster community and a sense of contentment . Dr. Justice has worked in a range of integrative and primary care clinics as a behavioral health specialist, counselor, clinical supervisor, and yoga instructor. Her passion is the integration of yoga and mindfulness to facilitate growth and inspire transformation.
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Mini Rattu (she/her)
PsyD, ERYT500, IAYT-Q
Dr. Mini Rattu is a clinical psychologist, specializing in trauma, stress, and anxiety disorders. She is a yoga teacher, psychedelic-assisted therapist, mindfulness instructor, and among the first graduates of YogaX’s Integrated Yoga Therapeutics Program for Qualified Healthcare Professionals (IAYT-Q). Dr. Mini includes culturally relevant training in her work. In addition to private practice, she enjoys competing in fitness competitions and facilitating health and wellness retreats, locally and internationally.
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Laura Schmalzl (She/Her)
PhD, RYT500, C-IAYT
Dr. Schmalzl is a Clinical Neuropsychologist, Cognitive Neuroscientist, and Yoga Therapist. For the past decade, she has been combining her clinical and academic background with her passion for yoga as a healing modality. She believes that Western Science and Eastern Wisdom Traditions beautifully complement each other in their perspectives on how we function as human beings, and that, combined, they provide a powerful, integrated approach for healing and personal development.
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Alex Schmidt (She/Her)
PsyD, RYT200
YogaX Mentor and Teacher
Dr. Schmidt has a PsyD in Clinical Psychology, specializing in Pediatric Psychology. Dr. Schmidt initially turned toward yoga in early adolescence from sport-related injuries. She has integrated yoga interventions into her practice in promoting the physical and mental health of adolescents, graduate students, and adult populations. She applies yoga principles alongside a wide range of psychological interventions to support families with children with severe illnesses.
Acknowledgements
We deeply acknowledge that yoga as a therapeutic discipline is deeply rooted in the health and cultural traditions of the indigenous peoples of many cultures and ethnicities within Southeast Asia and beyond. We share these practices with a deep respect, and profound humility, and many bows of gratitude to all who have transmitted these ancient wisdoms across the generations. In educating yoga teachers and clinicians about bringing yoga into healthcare, we seek to contribute to the calling-out and dismantling systemic and institutional factors that have created significant health inequities in many healthcare systems. Additionally, we advocate for systems changes that assure all who are in need of healthcare (from primary to tertiary prevention) to have equitable and compassionate access to healthcare that includes compassion, kindness, an attitude of listening, a desire to build relationship, and deeply respectful conversation.
YogaX’s home base in the School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral at Stanford University sits on the territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. You can learn more about their conservation efforts that continue to this day at https://www.amahmutsunlandtrust.org. Please consider a donation.
Our team owes a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Laura Roberts, the esteemed Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford Medicine. Her support and vision have been pivotal to establishing the bedrock for YogaX. Dr. Roberts' contributions to and faith in YogaX have been instrumental to the thriving of this groundbreaking initiative. Our shared commitment to advancing wellbeing of individuals and communities has been a powerful driver of YogaX’s growth.
