Elaine Oyang Yoga Therapy, Los Angeles, CA (2025)

04/16/2025

Imagine a world where both a mother and her newborn baby are fully nurtured and supported — where nourishing meals are delivered to the mother, house cleaned, laundry done — all for at least a month. All the mother needs to focus on is to rest and take care of her baby.

This is actually a real world...that exists predominantly outside of Western cultures.

In the Eastern cultures, this ancient and traditional practice of nurturing the mother for a month is called postpartum confinement. The mother stays at home for at least a month to nourish her body and recover from pregnancy and birth.

It’s a practice and ritual I firmly believe need to be introduced to the Western cultures.

My friend Dr Samantha Quezet and I chatted about this important truth about postpartum care in the most recent episode of the Sacred Listening Podcast.

For both myself and Dr Samantha, we accredit our smooth and speedy recovery to this tradition!

***

🎧 You can listen more about this story in Ep 25: The truth about postpartum care nobody talks about with Dr Samantha Quest
🔗 Link in bio / elaineyoga.com/podcast/ep-25

***

Dr Samantha Quezet documents her postpartum confinement experience in detail! Head over to to watch her videos.

***

Do you have any postpartum traditions within your family or culture? I would love to learn about yours!

***

03/12/2025

This week, my baby girl turns 1️⃣ (!!!!!) 🥳🎈

I’ve been reflecting on my own 1 year as a mother — how it’s completely changed and transformed me.

The changes and transformations were raw, challenging, and uncomfortable.

We’re not meant to be same the person as we were before after becoming a mother.

For me, there was maturation and a deep inner well of strength that I didn’t know I had.

I’ve released a 2-part episode on my becoming a mother — Matrescence.

In part 1, I share a little about the birth and finding healing and self-nurture with C-section recovery.

In part 2, I reflect on lessons learned about nurture in my 1 year of motherhood.

***

🎧 LISTEN IN via link in bio, Apple podcast or Spotify (Sacred Listening with Elaine Oyang)

elaineyoga.com/podcast

***

10/23/2024

Almost 10 years ago, I stepped into an integrative pain clinic to teach yoga.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was the day that my yoga teaching career took a drastic pivot.

Before me were a group of 7 people, all looking worn down, all living with chronic pain, most of them people of color, and most of them looking at me with suspicion.

I introduced myself, and went on to explain the benefits of yoga for mobility and stress management. Of course, most of them have never experienced yoga, and the idea of stress management and self-care are utterly foreign.

Over the next 3 years I spent 1-2x a week with groups of chronic pain patients like them at the clinic, teaching them simple breathing practices and gentle stretches to help ease their physical pain, as well as the emotional and mental pain that always come with chronic pain.

This was where I met Elena Velez, a medical interpreter and my guest today on my latest episode of the Sacred Listening podcast. Little did we know that several years later we would collaborate together once again to bring yoga, mindfulness, and self-care practices to the wider population of the Hispanic and Latino communities.

🎧 Listen IN to our conversation about her bilingual stress reduction program, Community Restoration Training, that she brings to workplaces for essential workers, and how she aims to build a multicultural support network emphasizing empathy and mutual respect.

🔗 Link in bio or head to elaineyoga.com/podcast

***

09/01/2024

Self-nurture is a constantly evolving practice. Self-nurture practices can vary by time of the day, season of the year, and season in life.

Life — it’s full of transitions. And for many menstruating people a major transition is perimenopause.

Once again, a rarely talked about topic unless one is going through the many challenges that can come with the hormonal shifts.

And once again, a sacred transition that is often treated like a “disease” in the Western medical fields.

But as with any transition in life, while perimenopause comes with its sets of challenges, you CAN navigate it with more ease if you have certain self-nurture practices in place.

This week, my good friend Yvette and I discuss how menstruating people can navigate these transitions with more grace and ease.

She tells us of:
* her own challenges of perimenopause
* how she applied her years of studies in yoga and Ayurveda to help ease her symptoms
* simple Ayurvedic principles to better prepare us for the transition and to handle potential challenges with more ease

***

Listen IN 🎧 elaineyoga.com/podcast/ep-17 or LINK IN BIO

***

08/08/2024

When you think of your period aka menstrual phase, you probably will elicit groans and whines.

For many menstruating people, periods (and even the week before the period) can be an inconvenient and even painful times of the month.

I’ve worked with many clients whose PMS symptoms start up to 1.5 weeks prior to their bleeding, meaning that they only have about 1.5 weeks of feeling good in their entire month! 🙁

The menstruating phase has often been touted as “dirty” in patriarchal cultures and societies, but it actually is a sacred time of the month for menstruating folks.

After all, the menstrual cycle is what makes creating life possibie.

This week, I chatted with Nicole Tillotson, menstrual health coach and founder of Season & Cycle, on how we can actually lean into the rhythms of our menstrual cycles so that we can experience the bleeding phases with more ease, less pain, and even harbor our intuitive superpowers.

She tells us that while PMS symptoms are common, they are not normal, and it is absolutely possible to be free of these painful and uncomfortable experiences when we start to live more in sync with the hormonal cycles.

The menstrual cycle is not inherently painful and uncomfortable. It is how we live out of sync with it that causes these common symptoms.

***

LISTEN IN 🎧 link in bio or elaineyoga.com/podcast

***

06/12/2024

You know that feeling when the time on your clock is glaring at you in the darkness of your room, reminding you just how many hours are left (not many) until you’d have to wake up?

No matter what our busyness culture says about sleep (i.e., “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”), sleep is an essential component in the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of a person.

Sleep is a passive process, but oftentimes we carry our states of busyness and fight-or-flight into the night without tools to down-regulate that energy and up-regulate our rest-and-digest mode.

For my very first guest interview podcast episode, I have a very good friend and colleague of mine, Lauren Ziegler, talk about the very thing many of us are lacking: SLEEP.

We discuss:

💤 How to know if your sleep needs improvement

💤 Being mindful and wise about our own daily habits that can affect our sleep

💤 How to better shift from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) at the end of the day for better sleep

💤 Correlations between sleep issues and emotional regulation

Head over to the link in bio or at elaineyoga.com/podcast to listen IN!

05/28/2024

Ten years ago me only knew how to work hard, push forth, and keep on keeping on. There was very little pausing and intentional resting. Even on vacations I had to “maximize” our time and see/do as much as possible.

A childhood upbringing and cultural influence instilled me the insatiable need to excel. What started as an external influence became a constant internal pressure.

This drive was behind every endeavor, and it led to my several burnouts throughout the last 10 years.

Each time I burnt out, there were some sort of physical or emotional manifestation, but there were always deeper inquiries needed to really resolve the outwardly manifestations.

With burnout, it really asks of us to contemplate on what’s driving our own actions. Is there an insecurity or an unmet need that we need to address and we need to nurture?

Indeed, my insecurities about myself, that I would only be loved and appreciated if I did everything perfectly, were the driving forces.

I share my story in this week’s podcast episode, dive into the definition of burnout, what leads to burnout, and how I regained my inner strength by nurturing myself.

Head over to the links in bio to take a listen! Then, follow-up with Episode 6 for a guided meditation to help nurture that inner urge to constantly excel to help prevent burnout.

05/02/2024

It’s here! The secret project I’ve been working on the last few months!

Truth be told, the idea of launching a podcast has been on my mind since 2019, but I never had the guts to actually follow through with it. It wasn’t until earlier this year, at 7 months pregnant, that I decided podcasting will be my next project.

Over the years of working 1:1 with clients and small groups, I’ve realized that the scope of my work goes beyond just teaching poses. Yoga therapy is beyond the mechanics of positioning the body or breathing in specific ways to relieve ailments. Yoga therapy encompasses the entire person — lifestyle, nutrition, living environment, mind, and heart.

While the restorative, supportive, and nurturing poses play a big role in creating sense of safety within the body (which is very important in regulating the nervous system to dial down, stress, anxiety, chronic pain and persistent health symptoms), the words I choose to share, educate, and invite my clients to contemplate on play an equally essential role.

I’ve shared with you many poses for the last few years, and now, I feel like it is time for me to share words.

Go to elaineyoga.com/podcast or the link in bio to listen to the trailer! ✨

🎉LAUNCHING SOON ON MAY 13🎉

02/26/2024

This 9-month journey is soon coming to an end. With this ending, there are beginnings. Forging, uncovering, unraveling of new life, new identities, new perspectives.

Physically, this pregnancy has been relatively smooth.

Emotionally, I struggled with guilt and shame for feeling mostly overwhelmed and anxious about starting a family, rather than excited and joyful. Yes, we had planned to start a family, but that didn’t mean that self-doubt didn’t plague me along the way.

Spiritually, it has been a test of trusting, surrendering, and allowing. And I know this test is just the beginning, a warm-up.

It’s as if the last 18 years of immersing myself in the practice and study of yoga were a preparation for this new chapter.

It will be the ultimate yoga practice.

11/06/2023

“Yoga ruined my life”

I first heard this cheeky phrase from Richard Freeman, a renowned Ashtanga yoga teacher, about 10 years ago.

He was referring to the fact that once yoga opens your eyes to the illusions of your world that you had believed would make you happy, you can no longer unsee it and you will feel called to embark on a self-realization journey (open challenging and uncomfortable).

I share in tomorrow’s newsletter how yoga has “ruined” my life over the last 17 years of practicing and studying it.

👉🏼Head to elaineyoga.com/email or link in bio to sign up for my newsletter to get the full story in your inbox tomorrow

A true path of self-awareness and realization is never an easy one, because you cannot grow without looking at what’s holding you back, which are often trauma and old emotional wounds.

There’s always, always, destruction before the creation.

👉🏼 Read full story of how yoga ruined my life tomorrow in your inbox. Sign up at elaineyoga.com/email

===

10/17/2023

I’ll be stepping back from posting regularly on social media for some time due to some (positive) personal life changes ✨

I’m heeding my body’s intuition to do less and reprioritize my focus for the time being.

I’d you would like to stay up to date on my teaching schedule, private session offerings, and small group programs, plus receive regular support for your own self-nurture journey, find me in my weekly newsletters.

You can sign up in the link in bio or at elaineyoga.com/email

===

💛 I help women restore balance from chronic health issues and nervous system dysregulations so they can show up more fully in life with ease 💛

07/18/2023

This is my *secret sauce* to healing depletion, pain, and feelings of never being enough…PART 1!

For the big reveal, stay tuned for PART 2, which I’m revealing on Thursday in my email newsletter.

Sign up here >> elaineyoga.com/email for the big reveal!

***

Elaine Oyang Yoga Therapy

04/16/2025

03/12/2025

10/23/2024

09/01/2024

08/08/2024

06/12/2024

05/28/2024

05/02/2024

02/26/2024

11/06/2023

10/17/2023

07/18/2023

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category