{"id":8735,"date":"2026-04-28T01:41:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T01:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/?page_id=8735"},"modified":"2026-04-29T02:43:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T02:43:20","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/?page_id=8735","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tIn one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans. – Kahlil Gibran\t<\/h1>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\"river\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead My Resume\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n

\n\t\t\tHi, I’m Kristen\t<\/h1>\n\tI live at the confluence rather than on a single shore. I am a somatic educator and steward of attention, standing with one foot in the sea and one on shore.\nMy work unfolds in the liminal 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 listen when body and mind fall out of agreement.\nI think like water while staying in relationship with earth forms, resisting false clarity and rushed conclusions. My work supports skillful threshold crossing, staying oriented when structures dissolve, and returning from depth with something that can be embodied in daily life.\nI am a mythopoet with dirt under my fingernails. I study philosophy, psychology, and spiritual traditions seriously, but refuse abstraction without embodiment. I am interested in enlightenment only if it survives real suffering, loss, ecological collapse, and human relationship.\nI am a midlife woman who no longer romanticizes transformation. I know the cost of holding community. I carry grief with literacy and understand what it means to compost difficult experience into relational wisdom.\nI am both a teacher of teachers and a student of the more-than-human world. Reciprocity matters more than performance, and process matters more than mastery.\nI am also practical. I think about governance, integrity, money, labor, power, and systems, even when speaking poetically. I care about sustainability across ecosystems, nervous systems, relationships, and livelihoods. The work must be beautiful and structurally sound.\nAt heart, I am a keeper of vessels and a guide across thresholds. I design spaces where insight is metabolized, intimacy is held, and depth is entered without abandonment. I help people walk between worlds and return with something usable, honest, alive and sustainable.\n
\n\t\t\t\t\"tree\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLearn More About YogaLife Institute\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n

\n\t\t\tFormal Bio\t<\/h1>\n\t

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<\/a>, where she has served as a lead teacher, program director, and curriculum designer, she has trained over 1,500 yoga teachers and yoga therapists.<\/h2>\nShe 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.\nHer 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 aquatic bodywork and group experience. These lineages inform a body of work that moves fluidly between structure and improvisation, precision and listening.\nKristen brings more than 10,000 hours of direct teaching experience, guiding trainings, retreats, and immersive learning environments internationally.\nShe is co-author of Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle<\/em><\/a> and former Editor of Yoga Living Magazine<\/em>.\nShe 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.\n

\n\t\t\tJoin me at the edges where land, sea and sky meet\t<\/h2>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans. – Kahlil Gibran Read My Resume Hi, I’m Kristen I live at the confluence rather than on a single shore. I am a somatic educator and steward of attention, standing with one foot in the sea and one on shore. My…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":35,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8735","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8735"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8820,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8735\/revisions\/8820"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyaswater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}