From Enemy to Ally: An Embodied Approach to Anxiety

Live online via Zoom with Antonio Sausys, MA, IGT, CMT, C-IAYT

September 9, 16, 23 & 30

Early Bird: $297 (until August 12) | Regular: $347

This is an affiliate program, please register directly via link below. You will receive a confirmation email with a link to join the sessions.

From Enemy to Ally is a 4-week experiential series integrating psychology and embodied yogic practice for working with anxiety in daily life.
Rather than approaching anxiety as something to eliminate, the series explores it as a meaningful signal that can be understood, regulated, and worked with through awareness, self-regulation, and experiential practice.

A Different Relationship with Anxiety
Many people experience anxiety not only during moments of crisis, but as a subtle and persistent undercurrent in daily life.

Health concerns, financial pressures, caregiving responsibilities, changing roles, and uncertainty about the future can quietly shape how we think, feel, and respond.

While understanding anxiety can be helpful, insight alone is often not enough. The relationship we have with anxiety is also embodied and shaped through experience over time.

From Enemy to Ally offers a space to move from understanding into practice.

What We’ll Explore
We explore how anxiety appears in both body and mind—through sensation, thought patterns, emotional responses, and automatic reactions.

Together, we explore:

  • Anxiety as a meaningful signal rather than an enemy
  • Physical and mental manifestations of anxiety
  • Patterns of reactivity and automatic response
  • Uncertainty, control, and internal narratives
  • Reconnecting with the heart and the emotional landscape beneath anxiety
  • Listening to what feelings may be asking rather than resisting them
  • Awareness, discernment, and effective action

Core shift:
From reacting to anxiety → relating to it as meaningful information

What You’ll Experience
Each session integrates psychological insight with embodied practice.
Sessions include:

  • Breath and regulation practices
  • Embodied awareness exercises
  • Reflective inquiry and guided exploration
  • Psychological frameworks for understanding anxiety\
  • Group discussion and shared learning
  • Practical tools for daily life integration

Between sessions, participants are invited to apply practices in daily life and bring real examples into the group process.

To support continuity:

  • Brief weekly tracking of anxiety patterns
  • Reflection on practice application
  • Each week combines learning, experience, and reflection.

What Becomes Possible
This series does not aim to eliminate anxiety, but to support a different relationship with it.
Through practice, participants often notice:

  • Greater awareness of anxiety patterns
  • Increased ability to pause before reacting
  • More confidence during uncertainty and activation
  • Stronger connection to inner resources and discernment
  • Greater steadiness in daily life
  • Rather than trying to get rid of anxiety, the work supports meeting it with clarity, choice, and agency.

Who This Series Is For
This series is for individuals experiencing anxiety in daily life who are interested in working with it more directly.

It may be especially relevant for:

  • Health professionals, therapists, and caregivers
  • Yoga teachers and yoga therapists
  • People navigating stress, uncertainty, or transition
  • Anyone seeking a more workable relationship with anxiety

No prior experience is required.

Attendance to all sessions is expected, as each builds on the previous one.

No recordings are provided. Missed Sessions: A private 1:1 make-up session may be scheduled if needed.


Antonio Sausys MA, IGT, CMT, C-IAYT is a somatic psychologist and yoga therapist specializing in grief counseling and therapy. His studies in Somatic Psychology were guided by Hugo Bilsky, and his yoga training includes teachings from swamis of the Satyananda, Sivananda, and Satchidananda traditions, as well as renowned teachers such as Indra Devi, Ram Das, and Rama Jyoti Vernon. Antonio has continued his professional growth through training in Integrative Grief Therapy with Lyn Prashant, as well as Foot Reflexology, Swedish Therapeutic Massage, and Reiki. Antonio presents his work both nationally and internationally at Schools and Universities and leads retreats at Ashrams, Retreat Centers and Yoga Studios., is a member of the World Yoga Council, the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a TV Host for YogiViews and the founder and Executive Director of ‘Yoga for Health’ the International Yoga Therapy Conference. He is the author of ‘Yoga for Grief Relief: Simple Practices for Transforming Your Grieving Mind and Body’ (New Harbinger) and a contributor for Yoga and Science in Pain Care – Treating the Person in Pain (Edited by Shelly Prosko and Neil Person – Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) and New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond by Robert Niemeyer (Routledge 2019).

2026-06-22T13:24:28-07:00June 15th, 2026|Tags: , , , |

Yoga Therapy Tools for Managing and Regulating Anxiety

Online | 4 Wednesdays, September 3, 10, 17, 24 | 5:30 – 7:00pm

$280.00

You will receive a confirmation email with a URL.

Can you relate to the following?

  • Feeling overwhelmed or unable to cope with an upcoming situation or event.
  • Struggling with concentration, racing or intrusive thoughts that won’t go away.
  • Finding it difficult to focus or think clearly, fixating on worries in the moment.
  • Experiencing heightened nervousness, restlessness, or tension.
  • Sensing an impending sense of danger, panic, or impending doom.
  • Noticeably increased heart rate or palpitations.
  • Rapid, shallow breathing (hyperventilation).
  • Excessive sweating without clear physical cause.
  • Uncontrollable trembling or shaking.
  • Feeling physically weak, fatigued, or drained.
  • You are not alone…

Anxiety is a complex and often misunderstood emotion. When mild, it can serve as a helpful motivator, keeping us alert and ready for whatever challenges lie ahead. It enhances our ability to anticipate problems and take preventative measures, improving both personal and collective safety.

However, when anxiety becomes excessive, it can overwhelm our ability to cope, leading to distressing physical and mental symptoms, and hindering our daily lives. Increased symptoms such as—lack of concentration, racing thoughts, and physical signs like palpitations and sweating—are all signs that anxiety has crossed a threshold into something more disruptive.

Our emotions shape how we experience life, how we connect with others, and ultimately, who we are. They guide our decision-making, influencing how we behave and navigate the many roles we play. But what happens when an emotion shifts from being a guide to becoming a controlling force? We become trapped in dysfunction, like a hamster endlessly running on a wheel.

In times such as the current ones when making important decisions is crucial, it’s essential to cultivate the resources that help us trust in our resilience.

Are you ready to manage and regulate your anxiety and better deal

with the challenges life is presenting?

Learn more

2025-07-21T19:57:50-07:00July 21st, 2025|Tags: , |

The Last Savasana: Yoga, Breathwork and Inquiry to Help Prepare You for the Final Exit

This event has been cancelled.

$62 Early bird, use promo code LAST, exp. 5/10
$72 Regular

Join Leslie and Richard for a deep dive into Savasana with a twist. Most of us spend our days trying to extend our lives, i.e. looking both ways before crossing a street, putting our seatbelt on and checking expiration dates on our food. Nonetheless, nothing we do, not even yoga, can help us escape life’s inevitable end. Yoga can help prepare us to face our fear of the inevitable, maybe even embrace it so that we come to appreciate the preciousness of each day we are alive.

  • Find a renewed appreciation for the beauty of our time on the planet
  • Increase personal agency around end of life decisions
  • Delve deep on what really matters to you
  • Realize a new perspective on a very old pose and how it can help you
    be more comfortable with the inevitable

Yoga is meant to bring us more awareness and gives us tools to manage the challenges of being human. This workshop is designed to manage the anxiety we all have around dying and to be more comfortable with these types of conversations.

There will be a short lecture on the history, practice, symbolic message of this often misunderstood pose. Then we will do a series of short practices with a savasana. Each practice will begin with a thought provoking question around your own death, like what are some of your regrets in life, or what do you want your legacy to be, who am I. After each practice, you will be given time to journal about each question. We’ll conclude with a group discussion and of course a final (FOR THIS WORKSHOP) savasana.

Leslie and Richard have been talking about the power of savasana for a long time. They got the idea to do a whole book about it and to include some of the teaching of yoga around accepting death. This workshop is a result of many hours of conversation and we hope to pull it all together for a book before we die!


Leslie Howard is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings nationally and has written a book about caring for the female pelvis, Pelvic Liberation. In 2022, after losing a long time student, she took a deep dive into the subject of death. She has 60 hours of Death Doula training, runs a regular Death Café (a place to come and talk about death) and is volunteering in hospice for Kaiser Oakland. Her teaching is informed by over 3500 hours of yoga study with senior Iyengar yoga teachers. She considers Ramanand Patel her most important influence and mentor. She has designed two very successful studies for UCSF on how to use yoga to alleviate incontinence and pelvic pain. To learn more about Leslie or for some online education opportunities visit: www.lesliehowardyoga.com

Richard Rosen, E-RYT500, began his practice of yoga in 1980 at the Yoga Room, in Berkeley, CA. Two years later he began a two-year teacher training course at the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, from which he graduated in 1983. In 1987, with his good friend Rodney Yee, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, which operated until 2012. Richard has written numerous articles and reviews for national yoga magazines, and is also the author of five books, four of them published by Shambhala: The Yoga of Breath (2002), Pranayama: Beyond the Fundamentals (2006), Original Yoga (2012), a book on traditional yoga practice based on the seventeenth century Gheranda Samhita (Gheranda’s Compilation), and Yoga FAQ: Almost Everything You Need to Know about Yoga–from Asanas to Yamas (2017). His fifth book for Shambhala, Yoga by the Numbers, is due out in the Spring of 2022. Richard lives in a 115-year-old bungalow in beautiful Berkeley, CA.

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