Hi, I'm Kristen
I live at a confluence rather than on a single shore, with one foot in the sea and one on terra firma.
I am an educator and a lifelong student, shaped by a love of learning that moves fluidly between teacher and student, each role deepening the other through practice and humility.
As an academic, I am guided as much by imagination as by knowledge. The world reveals its depth through attention, and what appears ordinary begins to shift when we learn how to see and listen differently.
I am committed to transdisciplinary inquiry, to stepping beyond the boundaries of single fields and into real conversation with others, including the more than human intelligences that offer orientation when we know how to receive it.
My work unfolds in the spaces between disciplines, traditions, and ways of knowing, weaving study into lived experience. I teach people how to move between worlds without losing themselves, how to translate sensation into meaning, and how to stay in relationship when body and mind are not aligned.
As a teacher of teachers, I bring a refined capacity for observation and inquiry, attending closely to both people and the structures that shape their experience, and shaping environments that allow discovery, insight, and sustainable action to take root.
Collaboration is central to how I create. I build programs alongside other educators, weaving diverse perspectives into containers that are both grounded and responsive.
These environments are informed by yoga and ecosomatic practice, and extend into aquatic spaces where water becomes an active teacher, softening habitual patterns and reorganizing perception through direct experience. The work also draws from expressive arts, mythopoetics, mysticism, sound healing, depth psychology and an ongoing relationship with the living world.
Formal Bio
Kristen Butera is a somatic educator, yoga therapist, and teacher of teachers with nearly two decades of full-time teaching experience and more than 10,000 hours of professional and academic training across yoga, somatic disciplines, and expressive arts. Through her work with YogaLife Institute, where she has served as a lead teacher, program director, and curriculum designer, she has trained over 1,500 yoga teachers and yoga therapists.
She holds Postgraduate Diplomas in Mythopoetics from Dartington Arts School and Movement, Mind, and Ecology through Schumacher College. Her academic work is grounded in a practice-as-research approach, where ideas are not only studied, but lived, tested through the body, shaped through relationship, and refined through direct experience.
Her training includes advanced study in yoga therapy, yin and restorative yoga, somatic movement practices, expressive arts, and contact improvisation, along with over 200 hours of dedicated training in Aquahara - a form of aquatic bodywork and guided group process. These lineages inform a body of work that moves fluidly between structure and improvisation, precision and listening.
Kristen brings more than 10,000 hours of direct teaching experience, guiding trainings, retreats, and immersive learning environments internationally.
She is co-author of Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle and former Editor of Yoga Living Magazine.
She is affiliated with Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT500, RYS 200/500 and YACEP. She is a C-IAYT and Program Director for an 800-Hour Training accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists.