Amina Naru, ERYT, YACEP

 

Amina Naru is the founder of Posh Yoga, Co-founder of Retreat to Spirit, a Usui reiki master, trauma-sensitive yoga instructor, and chair of the Race and Equity Consortium in Yoga, with a specialty in providing yoga and mindfulness programs to incarcerated youth and adults.  Amina is an active member on the board of directors for the international nonprofit, Accessible Yoga Association and serves on the board of directors for Bmore Empowered INC, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and girls of color through mindfulness and entrepreneurship in Baltimore City, Maryland.  

 

She is the former executive director of the national nonprofit organization, Yoga Service Council, and served three terms as secretary for the YSC Board of Directors. Amina is a contributing author to the books Best Practices for Yoga with Veterans (YSC/Omega, 2016) and Best Practices for Yoga in the Criminal Justice System (YSC/Omega, 2017). She worked as the project manager and contributor for Yoga and Resilience: Empowering Practices for Survivors of Sexual Trauma (Handspring 2020) and the Best Practices for Yoga with People in Addictions and Recovery Symposium at the Omega Institute. She also served as Executive Director of the nonprofit Empowered Community in Wilmington, DE, and is the first black woman to implement curriculum-based yoga and mindfulness programs for juvenile detention centers in the state of Delaware. 

 

Amina has been featured in the books Yoga Revolution by Jivana Heyman, Yoga Radicals by Allie Middleton, and Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma, by Dr. Gail Parker.  She has also been featured in Yoga Journal, Yoga Therapy Today, and the J. Brown and Yoga Alliance podcasts.  Amina Naru’s yoga service work is deeply informed by her studies with master teachers Johnny Gillespie of Empowered Yoga, James Fox of Prison Yoga Project, B.K. Bose of the Niroga Institute, Nikki Myers of Y12SR, and Jennifer Cohen Harper of Little Flower Yoga.