Heidi Sormaz Yoga

Heidi Sormaz, Ph.D., E-RYT 500, is the founder, owner and director

of Fresh Yoga, New Haven, CT's only donations-based studio. She's studied yoga for 29 years and taught for 23. A Forrest Yoga Guardian, Heidi currently teaches the Forrest Yoga 200-HR and Advanced Teacher Trainings, teaches and designed the Fresh Yoga 200 and 300-HR Trainings, travels nationally to teach, has taught at Kripalu, Esalen Insitute, an advanced vinyasa training with Rolf Gates, and in the Yoga, Meditation, and Recovery Conferences. Heidi has been featured in Yoga Journal and was selected by The Great Courses to design their first course on yoga; Yoga for a Healthy Mind and Body. In February of 2021, Audible.com released her How to Live a Yogic Lifestyle. In 2022, The Great Courses released her course Overcome Your Overthinking.

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Heidi's first love was the study of the mind. As an academic, she experimented with unwinding cognitive habits (habitual thinking) through specific attention, focus, and meditation work. She encourages students to work with their minds as specifically as

they work with their bodies. She is passionate about helping people transform the habits in their minds, bodies, and energy that keep

them stuck. This way of working helped her move through her own challenges of dealing with neurodiversity and recovering from an eating disorder. Heidi is now finishing her credentials to be a licensed Clinical Psychologist.

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Heidi is a certified Forrest Yoga teacher and Forrest Yoga Guardian. She has also studied Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga. In addition, she has extensive training in the martial art Taijiquan and the internal art Qigong. She is a senior student of Master Steven Bennett and has taught Taijiquan and Qigong at Yale University.

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Heidi received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology from Yale. She is an expert on the influence of arousal and attention on performance,

how anxiety affects thinking, stress management, and performance

in pressure situations. She has been an educator, speaker, and corporate trainer with over 20 years of experience in designing and leading seminars on stress management, meditation, and educator training. HDR Press published her book Performing Under Pressure, and Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 

published her article Meditation can Reduce Habitual Responding.

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In 2008, Yoga Journal selected Heidi as one of their "Next

Generation of Yoga Teachers".