AMS2022 Practice Session

Healing Body and Mind with Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra

This practice will include Yin Yoga (gentle stretching) and Yoga Nidra. YIN yoga targets your deep connective tissues, like your fascia, ligaments, joints, and bones. It’s slower and more meditative, giving you space to turn inward and tune into both your mind and the physical sensations of your body. While holding poses for a longer period of time, yin yoga helps you stretch and lengthen those rarely-used tissues while also teaching you how to breathe through discomfort and sit with your thoughts. Yoga Nidra is a deep state of conscious awareness or “yogic sleep”, which is a deeper state of relaxation with awareness. This state involves moving back and forth from conscious to unconscious states.

Ashley Baer

Ashley Baer is currently the Facilitator of Mindfulness Instruction in the Forsyth County School System, in Cumming, Georgia where she teaches mindfulness across the school district to students of all ages. She has been an educator for almost two decades teaching Special Education. When not teaching students mindfulness, she trains teachers how to practice mindfulness and meditation in their personal lives, and trains them to bring mindfulness into the classroom to build attention, focus and emotional regulation. Ashley is an advocate for mental health and well-being offering mindfulness and yoga to all employees across her district as self-care. She delivers professional development across the county on mindfulness. She believes mindfulness must start with leaders and leads a Mindful Moment virtually for all leaders and administration. She is passionate about addressing the mental health crisis in schools for students and staff. When not working, she volunteers to bring mindfulness into underserved populations such as prisons as a volunteer for Persevere, a nonprofit that trains prisoners to develop skills to be more employable and adjust to life once they are released. She teaches meditation on the app Insight Timer. Ashley dedicates her life and work to practicing and teaching mindfulness because she lost her mother to her own mental health struggles, which eventually led to her being in foster care. Through the practice of mindfulness, Ashley healed her own grief, trauma, and mental health struggles through these practices and teachings.