Rachel Brathen
Hi! I'm Rachel Brathen; a Swedish native, New York Times best-selling author, serial entrepreneur and international yoga teacher living in Aruba with my husband Dennis and our baby girl Lea Luna. After graduating from school in Stockholm, I traveled to Costa Rica where I found the joy of incorporating yoga into my everyday life. Deepening my yoga practice and beginning teaching, I moved to Central America where I spent years exploring the intricate studies of yoga and spirituality. After moving to Aruba early 2010, I began teaching yoga full time. My classes are a dynamic Vinyasa Flow integrating alignment, core work, and breathing techniques with basic poses and creative sequencing, but asana is only a small piece of the work we do in the yoga shala. I incorporate holistic therapeutic tools like sharing, active listening and journaling in every session and there is a deep level of heart healing at the center of every class I teach. My classes serve the purpose of deepening a connection not only to ourselves, but with the people around us. I love to share pieces of my life with the world! I do so every day through social media and you will find me traveling all over the world to connect with the amazing community I call home.
I am the founder of www.oneOeight.com; an online platform for yoga, meditation, and healing. As the most successful crowd-funded yoga project of all time, the platform is made up of a vast community of dedicated practitioners from all over the world looking to cultivate balance, create space for inner healing and deepen their yoga practice. With an amazing team of experienced guides and teachers, oneOeight offers heart-centered classes designed to fit the always evolving needs of body, mind and soul.
In 2016, Dennis and I opened Island Yoga - the largest yoga studio in the Caribbean, boasting two shalas, a boutique, an organic café and offices for our team. Visit www.islandyoga.com for information on teacher trainings, workshops and to see the upcoming schedule!
Giving back to the community has always been at the center of all of my initiatives – with the help of awesome staff and volunteers I run two non-profit organizations: Sgt Pepper’s Friends; an animal rescue foundation based in Aruba and Yoga Girl® Foundation, benefitting women and children in need.
Rachel Brathens articles
How to Keep Your Relationship Healthy: Find Someone You Can Dance With Forever
This life is one big dance, and I’m blessed to have met my forever dance partner. In business, parenting, marriage and friendship, Dennis and I have learned how to keep our relationship healthy: hold each other close, and keep dancing.
Moving Towards Love: How Yoga Girl® Consciously Chooses Love
Your heart needs to break open from time to time. It's how we transform and grow as human beings. If you've never had your heart broken open by loss and despair, if you've never truly been in pain, if you haven't walked through the fire and back…You haven't truly lived.
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Measure Your Value Only in Love: Yoga Girl's Guide to Loving Your Body
When we love ourselves, when we can find true appreciation for who we are as beings, not bodies, it's easy to care for your own health! When you love yourself, good decisions come naturally. We like to care for what we love. When we love who we are, our body is a vessel for love and we want it to be strong! We want it to be healthy, pain free. We want it to feel good.
Yoga After Giving Birth: A Coming Home on a Path Lined in New Love
Standing on my yoga mat with my postnatal body feels like meeting an old friend that I haven’t seen in ages. It’s familiar, but it isn't the same. Something big has shifted here.
Dance to the Rhythm of Your Heart: How Yoga Girl® Embodies the Magical Experience of Life
All you have is right here in front of you. Stop waiting for better days. Don’t hold back. Walk this earth with bare feet and eyes wide open – beauty is all around. Don’t blink… It might pass you by. Love wildly, passionately, without caution. Let the joy of being alive fill you to the tips of your fingers and your toes. Dance to the rhythm of your heart.
Yoga Girl's Guide To Beginning Your Yoga Practice
The question is - how do you start out as a beginner? The world of yoga is so wide and intricate, it can be overwhelming if you are brand new to the practice.
Life Lessons Worth Sharing: Yoga Girl's Guide to Living Your Best Life
I've come to terms with the fact that I'm broken. Not in a sad way but in an it-is-what-it-is kind of way. Life happened and I've adjusted accordingly. We're all a little bit shattered. Pain and heartache comes our way and with time we develop patterns that we think will protect us... but that only keep us in fear.
I am a Yoga Girl
We are the ones who will challenge the status quo and dare to make a difference.
Five Reasons You Should Make Yoga Girl's Chia Pudding Recipe Today!
Chia pudding is my favorite thing to eat for breakfast when I feel like eating something a bit sweet, it keeps me full for a long time, it works as a snack and even dessert, too!