About Sandra
Since 2007, Sandra has lovingly guided students in yoga, meditation, mindfulness, embodiment, and shadow work. Drawing from diverse spiritual traditions, she supports each person’s unique journey toward transformation, awakening, and a return to wholeness.
Sandra’s approach centers on bringing unconscious material into the light of awareness through heartfelt inquiry and compassionate presence. She empowers clients on their path to wholeness, helping them find greater awareness, freedom, peace, and fulfillment.
As a meditation and yoga teacher and healing arts practitioner, Sandra’s role is to awaken and empower. She assists clients in recognizing unconscious patterns, gently guiding them through the unwinding of old, unproductive habits. Her work is rooted in the wisdom and tools gained through her own healing journey.
Nondual awareness, presence, curiosity, and mindful, loving inquiry are foundational to her practice. These qualities encourage a deeper understanding of how our conditioning and early experiences shape our perception and, ultimately, our quality of life.
Many of us are taught to seek answers outside ourselves. Sandra’s offerings, however, invite an inward turn—encouraging exploration of the mind’s nature, and how our filters and programming color our experiences. By awakening the inner witness, we can begin to disentangle from attachments to longstanding patterns. This brings an opportunity for conscious choice, allowing us to respond rather than react, and to experience a fuller, more rewarding life. Through this work, we address deeply rooted traumas and core beliefs, often hidden from ordinary awareness, that have never been fully seen, questioned, or integrated.
Just as we see deeper into a lake when its surface is calm, we gain greater insight into our psyche when we cultivate stillness and equanimity. This witness consciousness allows us to meet whatever arises—pleasant, neutral, or challenging—with openness. Over time, we develop the capacity to access and understand the foundational “operating system” that underlies physical, psychological, and behavioral symptoms.
Often, these core wounds reside beyond the reach of the conscious mind, embedded in somatic memory and the subconscious. Practices such as meditation, yoga, breathwork, and healing rooted in Awareness help unwind physical tension and release energy bound in the body. Much like deep meditation or psychedelic journeys, these practices can catalyze shifts in consciousness that bring about profound insight, realization, and healing.
Sandra’s path has taken her around the world, studying many spiritual traditions and healing modalities over the past eighteen years. Her intention has always been to go directly to the heart of each teaching and offer what is needed in the moment. Her training includes hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, breathwork, dance, yogic philosophy, Indo-Tibetan practices like Maha Mudra and Dzogchen, shamanism, Christian Mysticism, psychology, Hakomi Somatic Body Based Psychotherapy, and a deep study with the Hatun Q’ero healers. Each of these practices is offered with the intention to support healing, freedom, and reconnection to one’s natural capacity for growth and transformation.
Path & Background
For much of her early life, Sandra navigated the challenges of depression. Looking back, she now recognizes a landscape shaped by unresolved trauma, suppressed emotions, unintegrated experiences, and limiting core beliefs—many of which were shaped by her own thoughts, as well as generational family patterns. To cope, Sandra stayed excessively busy, turned to alcohol, and lived according to the belief that “I don’t really matter.”
After graduating from Texas A&M University in 2001, Sandra managed to function well in her career but found little capacity for joy. By 2006, this inner struggle reached a breaking point. Though successful in sales, with a good income, her own place, and friendships, Sandra felt more lost than ever. Driven by intuition, she made the pivotal decision to leave her position and embark on a healing sabbatical, seeking answers to the question: What is the true root of happiness?
This decision transformed her life. Sandra’s journey took her to India, where she immersed herself in yoga, meditation, yogic philosophy, and astrology, exploring the nature of mind, subtle body anatomy, and the healing arts.
Upon returning, Sandra apprenticed with her first spiritual teacher, Shashi Pottathil, in San Diego, California. Over nearly three years of dedicated study, Sandra learned a classical style of Sivananda Hatha Yoga, training six days a week under his guidance. This period laid the foundation of her practice. During this time, Sandra earned her RYT200 and advanced RYT300 certifications, becoming an E-RYT500 yoga teacher and a certified yoga therapist through IAYT.
Sandra then expanded her practice through several years of Kundalini Yoga, deepening her understanding of the energetics of yoga. This coincided with an interest in shamanic work, spurred by profound personal experiences. She began studying shamanic healing with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, as well as with mentors Annette Knopp, co-founder of Blue Spirit Retreat Center, and Ben Allen.
Around this period, Sandra discovered Holotropic Breathwork as a healing tool, dedicating several years to intensive study. She also completed a year-long Healing Breath Training with Wahe Guru Kaur at The Awareness Center in Los Angeles. Combined with her background in yogic pranayama, these experiences led Sandra to develop her own style of breathwork, informed by her intuition and study.
In 2014, Sandra began working with highly skilled therapists, exploring Hakomi, Internal Family Systems, and somatically oriented approaches. That same year, she began studying Maha Mudra and Dzogchen Buddhist Meditation under Dr. John Churchill, immersing herself deeply in these teachings. These transformative practices opened her to the Ground of Being.
Further inspired by Dr. John Churchill, Sandra continued her studies with Rupert Spira, Dr. Reggie Ray, and Annette Knopp, delving into the nature of mind and true self-awareness.
In 2019, Sandra completed a nine-month training with Nina and Ray Christ, where she explored shamanism, the healing arts, and energy medicine in even greater depth.
In January 2021, Sandra enrolled in a two-year comprehensive training program in Hakomi somatic body-based psychotherapy, integrating these teachings into her evolving practice.
In 2024, Sandra began a year-long immersion with the Hatun Quero healers, exploring their rich traditions of wisdom and healing. This journey is deepening her understanding and expanding her practice as she continues to integrate these ancient teachings into her work.
Teaching yoga full-time since 2007, Sandra has led over 15,000 classes, reaching tens of thousands of students. Her passion for this work has only deepened. As her sensitivity to energy developed, she began offering energetic healing sessions for individuals seeking somatic and spiritual support and a deeper awakening of awareness.
Sandra remains a devoted seeker and lifelong learner, committed to personal growth, healing, and awakened awareness. She frequently participates in trainings and retreats, both for her own development and to support other teachers. This ongoing nourishment allows her to bring her best to clients with compassion and skill.
“It is truly an honor to do this work. Please reach out if you would like to explore working together. Thank you for taking the time to connect here and read.” — Sandra
A core tenet of every session is Sandra’s commitment to sharing any gifts received generously with all beings, everywhere, across all times.