LoveYourBrain Training Faculty
Level 2 - Yoga & Facilitation Trainings
Guest Faculty
Michelle Johnson
Pronouns: (she/her)
Michelle is an activist, social justice warrior, author, dismantling racism trainer, yoga teacher and practitioner, and an intuitive healer. With over 20 years experience leading dismantling racism work and as a licensed clinical social worker, she has a deep understanding of how trauma impacts the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Michelle’s awareness of the world through her own experience as a Black woman allows her to know, first-hand, how privilege and power operate.
Michelle has a Bachelors of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary and a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has worked in several non-profits and served as an elected official and on many non-profit boards of directors. Michelle has led Dismantling Racism Trainings with large corporations, small non-profits, and community groups, including the ACLU-WA, Duke University, Google, This American Life, The Center for Equity and Inclusion, Eno River Unitarian Universalist Church, Lululemon, and many others. Michelle published Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World in 2017 and Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief in 2021, and created her own podcast, Finding Refuge, which explores collective grief and liberation.
Tristan Katz
Pronouns: they/he
Tristan Katz (they/them) is a writer, educator, digital strategist, and equity-inclusion facilitator who holds space for learning and unlearning about gender as it relates to trans inclusion and queer competency. They also teach marketing practices to foster business growth from a justice and equity-focused perspective. Their intention is to offer this work with an anti-oppression and intersectional lens.
Tristan was named one of Yoga Journal’s 2021 Game Changers and they were awarded the Reclamation Ventures grant in Spring 2021 to expand their offerings and dedicate time to writing their first book.
Tristan is proud to serve on the Board of Directors at Accessible Yoga, a non-profit working, through education and advocacy, to share the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized, and to identify and remove barriers to access, build strong networks, and advocate for an accessible, equitable yoga culture.
Jon Prescott
Pronouns: he/him/his
Jonathan Prescott is a Board Certified Clinical Chaplain and Pastoral Counselor, with an extensive background in hospice, cancer care, hospital Chaplain, and a spiritual practice as an ordained monk and student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Jonathan’s practice is to support people experiencing illness and end of life, foster effective caregiving, and reconnect people with their innate wisdom and compassion. Jonathan is the founder of Wise Caregiving, a non-profit dedicated to helping people become effective, sustainable, and empathetic caregivers.
LoveYourBrain Training Faculty
Jackie Farrell, MS, OTR/L, CBIS, RYT-200
Pronouns: she/her
Native Land Acknowledgement and Today-Known-As Location: The ancestral land of the Massachusetts and their neighbors the Wampanoag, and Nipmuc Peoples, now known as Boston, Massachusetts.
My Superhero Is: my mom
Jackie Farrell, MS, OTR/L, CBIS, RYT-200 is an occupational therapist, LoveYourBrain yoga teacher and certified brain injury specialist. As a clinician and yoga teacher, she integrates evidence based practices from her experience in neurological rehabilitation as well as applying emerging new evidence on yoga and meditation practices. Jackie leads and assists the LYB ‘FUNdamentals’ series in Boston, co-leads LYB Yoga Teacher Training and Training for Health Professionals and facilitates the LYB Mindset Program.
Clinical Experience: As an occupational therapist, Jackie has experience in working in neurological rehabilitation throughout the continuum of care as well as experience in psychiatric rehabilitation with a focus on maximizing personal independence and fostering resilience. She regularly participates in continuing education courses tailored to neurological rehabilitation, the neurobiology of trauma and the applications of yoga and meditation as a therapeutic modality. She regularly presents at conferences and brain injury support groups on the benefits of yoga for brain injury including the Brain Injury Conference of Massachusetts and local brain injury support groups.
Teaching: Jackie's goal as a teacher is to encourage her students to tune in to the way their body changes everyday, and to empower her students to feel comfortable in modifying their practice based on their current needs. Jackie contributes to the LoveYourBrain Meditation Movement and LoveYourBrain Tips, both available for free on the LoveYourBrain website. Since 2016, Jackie has offered the LYB ‘FUNdamentals’ series on a quarterly basis to individuals with a TBI and their caregivers in the Boston area and now leads LYB's newest program, the virtual LYB Mindset Program. She also offers adaptive yoga classes in the Boston area in partnership with Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. She has experience teaching yoga both in-person and virtually.
Training: Following the completion of her 200-hour training, Jackie has completed over 80 hours of training in adaptive yoga through Mind Body Solutions under the direction of Matthew Sanford and is currently enrolled in their Opening Yoga Instructor Certification. She has completed a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course as a participant as well as received a certification in MBSR. She has taken courses related to the experience of trauma through the lens of a yoga teacher and a clinician including the International Trauma Conference and Neurobiology of Trauma through the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. Through her training and experience, Jackie truly believes that everyone can do yoga.
Kyla Pearce, MPH, PhD, E-RYT-200, CBIS
Pronouns: she/her
Native Land Acknowledgement and Today-Known-As Location: The ancestral lands of the Abenaki people, today known as Vermont
My Superhero Is: Anyone who leans into adversity for learning and growth.
Kyla has blended her expertise as a yoga teacher and researcher to develop a TBI-focused yoga curriculum that integrates gentle yoga, meditation, pranayama, and psychoeducation. This curriculum, now offered in yoga studios across the United States and Canada, is designed based on the science underpinning resilience, and empowers people with TBI to become more active participants in their healing process.
Training: Since the inception of the LYB Yoga program in 2015, Kyla has trained over 1,500 yoga teachers and clinicians in how to adapt yoga, meditation, and pranayama for TBI, including physical, cognitive, and social modifications. Specifically, Kyla leads comprehensive in-person and online trainings designed for yoga teachers, clinicians, and TBI advocates who want to gain knowledge and skills in how to adapt these practices to address the unique needs of those with brain injury. Kyla is currently in the two-year intensive Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program overseen by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. She has completed trainings in vinyasa, ashtanga, adaptive yoga with Matthew Sanford, Lakshmi Voelker Chair Yoga, iRest Level 1 and 2 yoga nidra, Advanced Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness with David Treleavan, Yin Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation with Sagel Urchel, Self-Compassion with Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, among others.
Teaching: Kyla has been teaching yoga, pranayama, and meditation to groups of individuals with TBI and their support people since 2014. She has been an invited faculty at several conferences related to using yoga for improving physiological and psychosocial outcomes, including at the Yoga for Traumatic Stress Conference in Sedona, AZ and the Yoga Service Conference in Rhinebeck, NH. Kyla also curates and contributes to the LoveYourBrain Foundation’s Meditation Movement, a series of TBI-focused audio-recorded meditations available for free on the LoveYourBrain Foundation’s website.
Research: Kyla is a post-doctoral research scholar at Dartmouth College, through which she investigates the effectiveness of yoga for populations with different neurological conditions, including TBI and MS. She also leads LoveYourBrain’s research portfolio in the application of yoga and meditation for community-based rehabilitation for TBI. She was the Primary Investigator on the largest published study of yoga for TBI, which found significant improvement in quality of life, resilience, cognition, and positive affect among 705 people with TBI who participated in the LoveYourBrain Yoga program. She also led the design and implementation of a pilot evaluation of an 8-week gentle yoga program from people affected by brain injury, published in the peer-reviewed journal, Brain Injury. She also led a qualitative study, published in Disability and Rehabilitation, exploring the experiences of participants in the LoveYourBrain Yoga program. To support clinicians to integrate yoga and meditation into their clinical practice, she also conducts academic presentations (e.g., Brain Injury Rehabilitation Conference) and in-service presentations (e.g., Craig Hospital, Shepherd Center, Scripps Memorial Hospital) describing the evidence of using these practices to support TBI rehabilitation.
Ramsay Pierce, RYT-500, RPYT, YACEP, Certified Amrit Yoga Nidra Instructor, Certified Mindfulness Instructor
Pronouns: they/them
Location: Living and paying native land tax on the unceded lands of the Abenaki, today known as Putney, VT
My Superhero Is: My Nisei grandmother, Sumiko Yeya Mansfield
As someone who identifies mixed-race, gender nonbinary, and from the in-between spaces, Ramsay knows that they cannot deny another without also denying themself, and is called to keep opening to the complexity that exists within each of us. Ramsay believes yoga is a practice that allows for just this - seeing truth and coming to know ourselves, and in doing so being able to live with greater accountability and love. Ramsay is able-bodied, navigating PTSD, mental illness and other non-visible disabilities that give them compassion and understanding for tending to the parts of each other that we may not see or fully understand.
Ramsay co-leads the LoveYourBrain Teacher Trainings to offer yoga teachers and clinicians tools in how to adapt yoga and meditation practices to be accessible for the TBI community. They offer teaching expertise to make yoga accessible, individually healing, and empowering for all students through the LoveYourBrain Yoga, Mindset, and Retreat programs.
Training: Ramsay has over 1,500 hours of training, including specialized training in yoga for self-regulation and trauma, yin yoga, restorative yoga, and they are certified through the Integrative Amrit (I AM) Method as a yoga nidra instructor. They are also a Certified Mindfulness Instructor, having trained with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and David Perrin. In alignment with LoveYourBrain’s commitment to make yoga more diverse, accessible and inclusive, Ramsay completed a RYT-300 training with activist, social justice warrior, anti-racism consultant and trainer, Michelle C. Johnson, focusing on the intersection of yoga and justice. They are committed to working through an intersectional lens that examines and addresses how some within the TBI community are further marginalized based on race, ethnicity, gender, and other identities that experience structural and institutional oppression.
Teaching: Ramsay has over 3,500 hours of teaching experience. They have been practicing and offering yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices for over a decade in various spaces - yoga studios, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation facilities, retreat programs, online classes, in labor & delivery spaces as a birth doula, facilities of incarceration, corporate workplaces, and more. They have lead and assisted the local LoveYourBrain 6-week yoga program, taught in the online LYB Mindset program, and mentor newly LYB-trained teachers across the country to enhance their professional development.
Professional: Ramsay has over a decade of experience working for nonprofits. In their role at LYB, they have stewarded yoga studios, clinical facilities, yoga teachers and clinicians across the US and Canada in learning, implementing and expanding the LYB curriculum to the TBI community. They have presented on behalf of LoveYourBrain at national conferences (Craig Hospital Brain Injury Summit) and in rehabilitation facilities (QLI, JFK Johnson, Kessler, Magee, Virginia Hospital) describing the evidence of using yoga and meditation practices to support TBI rehabilitation.