About Brooke.

Brooke West (they/she) is a longtime student of Raja yoga and has been teaching yoga and meditation since 2005. She is an innovative researcher, dedicated educator and a compassionate peer support group facilitator. She thoughtfully supports those who have had spiritually transformative experiences. She acts to stay socially current, to keep yoga relevant, to educate herself and to teach as inclusively as possible.

“She is a true healer.”

— Nancy Walker, Director of The Wellness Kitchen, Templeton, CA

Brooke leads classes, workshops, teacher trainings and retreats throughout the U.S. Currently, Brooke resides in Olympia, Washington. She offers yoga therapy at The Olympia Yoga Sanctuary, a healing collective. Pre-pandemic, her boutique restorative yoga studio in San Luis Obispo County, California, evolved into The Yoga West Cooperative, a women-led, values-driven business.

Brooke maintains a private yoga therapy practice with clients on the central coast of California, in Western Washington State and online globally.

 From Brooke: Tools, techniques, resources, and personalized guidance are often necessary for recovery which is why therapy is recommended as a complement to psychiatry. The spiritual component and the somatic (physical, body) component are often left out of behavioral health interventions. This is why Yoga was so helpful for me, for my recovery. Yoga speaks to the transcendent. You can use yoga right now and you will be able to use yoga for the rest of your life, as a holistic measure to self-regulate. Yoga provides appropriate self-care skills for anyone with willingness and devotion to their own healing.

I have been teaching yoga for spiritual emergence for sixteen years, and practicing daily for 24 years. I believe that yoga practitioners have a massive opportunity to make permanent changes for global peace, justice, and the environment, as a way of activism and love.

Yoga helped save my own life after my sister's suicide. I did not have a map or a mentor to help me through the recovery and the integration process, which included my own mental health journey. I was lost for a long time. I worked hard to find resources, pre-internet. One resource that changed everything for me was Kriya Yoga. 

My life today is healthy, balanced and centered on calmness, self-care and rest. I accept the mystery but I am not a slave to it. How did I integrate? I had nothing left to lose but misery. Consistent practice of yoga; hours of deep relaxation; perseverance and time; good teachers and lots of community were what I found helpful and what I offer my students. Building a network that recognizes unity within duality, that seeks to transcend the binary, and balancing motion with relaxation brought me home to my body and back to a life worth living.

Traditionally trained at an ashram, Brooke creatively modernizes classic breathing exercises and postures to meet people where they are. This aids in healing and recovery of trauma, stress and related ailments. She teaches clients how to become aware of themselves and how to function in the present moment; how to self-soothe; and how to balance emotions to experience contentment and peace.

Viewing psychosis, anxiety and depression through a yogic lens, her collaborations with progressive organizations worldwide, invested in both science and spirituality, bring hope and healing to individuals and the collective.

She views mental distress as a catalyst for positive transformation and spiritual growth.

Sessions are like naps with lullabies: comfortable, calm and just quiet enough to know that you are in safekeeping.

 Giving Back

Brooke prefers behind-the-scenes collaborations that have a broad reach. Brooke kickstarts community yoga outreach programs for fun! She is a support group facilitator for The American Center for The Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE). She co-taught yoga online with Violet Loveys, a former yoga student of Brooke's, for The International Bipolar Foundation. She is a GiveBackYoga.org grant recipient for an intensive drug-court and mental health-court outpatient program. She mentors genderqueer artists and activists based in Los Angeles and Washington State. 

Private fundraising is love and joy in action for Brooke, because it requires the integrity of solid relationships to succeed. Brooke has raised thousands of dollars to provide access to yoga therapy and health care for mentally distressed, underserved, neurodivergent, LGBTQ+ students in the U.S. 

She enjoys mentoring youth, particularly in their early to mid-20's, and has been called upon to support the dying and death process for several aged yoga therapy clients.

Rest disrupts trauma and is one of the most difficult skills to master. Rest and relaxation are essential for our communities to heal. Radical rest is part of the new medicine for social justice. Brooke is widely known as a relaxation specialist. She has a laid-back attitude, having lived on the beaches of California in surf communities for decades.

Brooke advocates for the practice of relaxation-based yoga for neurodivergent, consensus paradigm-divergent, mental health-related spiritual awakening. She is a fierce advocate for the disinherited, having been there and back.

Brooke continues ongoing training and includes the expertise of their own life experience to support the integration of her clients. Yoga therapy services are rooted in evidence-based research and the Yoga lineage. 

Her approach is professional, sensitive, ethical and gentle.

Students describe working with her as "life-saving," "magic," "shamanic," "nurturing," and "transformational."