Collective Resilience

Trauma-Informed Yoga & Somatics Training and Certification

RW ALVES, C-IAYT, SEP, E-RYT500

RW Alves (she/they) is a social justice educator, certified yoga therapist, yoga teacher trainer, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner based in Seattle. Her work in the world and in yoga is informed by her experience as a fat white queer femme with a lifelong involvement in social justice and activism.

She works at the intersections of social justice, movement, and practice by developing curriculum, training and mentoring yoga teachers and yoga therapists, facilitating spaces for self-care and community-care for activists, and teaching about body positivity, body diversity, and body liberation, inclusive languaging and teaching, trauma-informed yoga, nervous system resilience, accessible asana, social justice, privilege, and spiritual practice.

In addition to teaching trauma-informed yoga through a social justice lens with Collective Resilience, RW serves as Faculty for Off the Mat, Into the World and The Yoga Service Conference, and is a co-founder and trainer for Bending Towards Justice, which provides anti-oppression, equity, and social justice trainings for yoga teachers and practitioners around the country. She is a contributor to the Yoga Service Council’s forthcoming book on Best Practices in Yoga for Addiction and Recovery.

She is passionate about exploring and unearthing the interconnections and interweavings between social injustice, trauma, social justice, and resilience, and believes deeply in the power of practice to ground, sustain, align, and inspire us in our important and world-changing work.