Therapeutic Yoga for Youth - Anxiety, Depression & Trauma
Integrating Yoga, Somatics & Nervous System Regulation for Healing and Resilience
Therapeutic Yoga for Youth – Anxiety, Depression & Trauma
Integrating Yoga, Somatics & Nervous System Regulation for Healing and Resilience
This experiential workshop explores therapeutic yoga and somatic practices to support children, teens, and young adults experiencing anxiety, depression, and the effects of trauma.
Together, we will explore the intersection of yoga, somatics, neuroscience, and trauma-informed care to offer practical, embodied tools that support nervous system regulation, emotional well-being, resilience, and authentic connection.
This training emphasizes helping young people develop self-awareness, build self-confidence and self-agency, establish healthy embodied boundaries, and reconnect with their authentic selves, while honoring each individual's unique nervous system, readiness, and lived experience.
What You'll Explore
- Understanding anxiety, depression, and trauma through the lens of nervous system regulation.
- Recognizing different nervous system states and learning when to utilize upregulating or downregulating practices.
- Trauma-informed yoga and somatic practices that foster safety, regulation, and resilience.
- Breath, movement, grounding, interoceptive, proprioceptive, and sensory-based practices that support embodied awareness.
- Building self-confidence, self-agency, emotional resilience, and connection to one's authentic self.
- Embodied boundary practices that cultivate self-awareness, healthy expression, and a felt sense of safety.
- Variations and adaptations that meet the developmental, sensory, emotional, and nervous system needs of children, teens, and young adults.
- Practical tools to support co-regulation, emotional regulation, and everyday well-being.
Our Approach
This workshop focuses on offering practices that are:
- Trauma-informed and nervous system-responsive.
- Accessible and adaptable for a wide range of developmental, sensory, and emotional needs.
- Flexible, allowing practices to be modified according to each young person's current nervous system state.Simple, practical, and sustainable for use across therapeutic, educational, clinical, and home environments.
- Rather than focusing solely on reducing symptoms, we explore how cultivating safety, connection, choice, and embodied awareness creates the conditions for healing, growth, resilience, and authentic self-expression.
Embodied, Strength-Based Approach
This course centers:
- Individual strengths, interests, and capacities.
- Safety, connection, and co-regulation as the foundation for learning.
- Self-awareness, self-confidence, self-agency, and authentic expression.
- Healthy embodied boundaries and nervous system flexibility.
- Curiosity, compassion, and choice over compliance.
- Trauma-educated, neurodevelopmentally responsive, relationship-centered care.
- Participants will gain both conceptual understanding and practical tools they can immediately integrate into therapeutic, educational, clinical, and community-based settings.
Who This Course Is For
- Yoga teachers and yoga therapists
- Mental health professionals
- Occupational, physical, and speech-language therapists
- Educators and school-based professionals
- Counselors, psychologists, and social workers
- Parents and caregivers
- Anyone supporting children, teens, and young adults experiencing anxiety, depression, or trauma
Course Details
🗓 Friday, August 22, 2026
⏰ 9:00 AM–12:00 PM Pacific Time
💻 Live on Zoom
🎥 Recording available (if you're unable to attend live)
✨ Registration is now open.
Course Investment
💰 Early Bird Registration: $165
🗓 Available through August 15, 2026
💰 Regular Registration: $195
Your registration includes live participation on Zoom, along with access to the course recording for 4 months, allowing you to revisit the material or participate if you're unable to attend live.
Looking Ahead: Upcoming Public Module
✨ Therapeutic Yoga for Youth: Child & Adolescent Development, Sensory Integration & Primitive Reflexes
Saturday, September 12, 2026
9:00 AM–12:00 PM Pacific Time
Explore child and adolescent development through the lens of therapeutic yoga, somatics, neuroscience, sensory integration, and primitive reflexes. Gain practical, embodied strategies to support healthy development, nervous system regulation, sensory-motor integration, learning, emotional well-being, and resilience in children, teens, and young adults.
👉 Click HERE to view details and register for à la carte public modules.
Want to Go Deeper?
You can also explore the full 100-Hour Yoga Therapy for Youth Training & Certification, which brings together all public modules along with additional in-depth learning to support comprehensive, trauma-educated work with children, teens, and young adults with complex needs.
👉 Click HERE to learn more about the full 100-Hour Yoga Therapy for Youth Training & Certification.
Your Instructor
Shawnee Thornton Hardy is a yoga therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Ayurvedic wellness guide, and somatic touch facilitator. She is the founder of Embodied WellBeing Yoga Therapy, Asanas for Autism and Special Needs, and Yoga Therapy for Youth, and brings over three decades of experience working with diverse populations across all ages and stages of life. Her work is devoted to supporting children, teens, and young adults with neurodivergence, sensory processing differences, and complex needs—while also guiding the professionals who care for them. She is deeply passionate about helping individuals reconnect with their inner child through her trainings and offerings, supporting healing, play, and a return to authenticity.
With a deeply integrative and somatic approach, Shawnee weaves together yoga therapy, sensory integration, Polyvagal-informed practices, Somatic Experiencing, and embodied awareness to support regulation, resilience, and authentic expression. Her work is rooted in the understanding that behavior is communication, and that healing happens through safety, connection, and the body.
Shawnee is the creator of the C.A.L.M.M. Yoga Toolkit and Body Sensations Curriculum, and the author of Asanas for Autism and Special Needs and Yoga Therapy for Children and Teens with Complex Needs. She leads trainings and workshops internationally and serves as faculty for yoga therapy programs, mentoring practitioners in developing compassionate, inclusive, and effective approaches. She has been featured in numerous magazines, online publications, and podcasts.
Her teaching is both practical and deeply human—bridging science, lived experience, and heart-centered care. The root of her teachings is inclusion and accessibility. Through her courses, Shawnee invites you into a way of working that honors the nervous system, respects individuality, and supports meaningful, lasting change.
See her Website Here