Hi, I’m Catrina Armendariz.  Founder of Essence Living, trauma-informed yoga therapist and graduate student in Clinical Psychology.

Welcome 🤍

My early child and adulthood experiences of trauma, which comprise years of violence and abandonment, propelled me on a lifelong journey of healing through yoga.  

At four-years of age, my maternal grandmother introduced me to devotion.  Thus began my deep practice of prayer and song as connection to spirit.  Soon after, I discovered yoga in its myriad forms through books and online resources.  

I committed years to practicing yogic techniques and cultivating non-ordinary states of consciousness.  This was followed by years of training, awareness cultivation and inner-child work that helped me to integrate these techniques with the cultivation of inner-wisdom. 

Essence Living is a blog housing the research and cognitions that arise on my path of Self-discovery. 

It is an unfolding of the sweetness of living as I experience it through feminine embodiment.  An allowing, witnessing, and becoming; and a dynamic return to Essence Nature, the form and formless beauty that is perpetually blossoming forth through being.  

It is an invitation for conversation.  And a fresh synthesis of ancient, time-honored wisdom with modern frameworks of self-care.  

Join me in enlivening our feminine embodiment and establishing new paradigms that support our natural interdependence.

With love,