Integrative Life Therapy LLC, Anne Esguerra c-IAYT

12/08/2025

We’re not living our yoga practice!
As yoga teachers, exercising our control issues/projection onto yoga students is not YOGA. Completing a Yoga Teacher Training (no matter how many hours) doesn’t give us the authority to tell yoga students to “do as I say” or assume to know what’s best for them. Dominant culture, shaped by western white supremacy culture demands order, perfection, and quiet submission. It encourages a “no pain no gain” mentality of “pushing past your comfort zone” without acknowledging folks who live in bodies that have never even experienced comfort. It shows up as ignoring someone’s personal boundaries, labeling them “disrespectful” or “disruptive” for honoring their own needs. It is our fear of perceived chaos that defines it as insubordinate or out of line.

But yoga is a practice of relationship. It cultivates awareness, compassion and knowing that whatever is happening for someone else is separate from your ego as a teacher. It asks us to create space where people feel permission to be themselves, to feel welcome as they are, not shamed or corrected for meeting themselves where they are at.

And in those moments that feel “out of control” the real practice is revealed: pausing, observing and inquiring within. Yeah…that.
Let’s talk more about that at our upcoming workshop for Yoga Teachers & Yoga Studio Owners, THE VIBE IS A LIE: UNF*CK YOUR YOGA TEACHING.

We hope you’ll join in this conversation with us!
❤️Anne & Liz



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12/04/2025

Mainstream wellness culture leans hard into hyper-individualism;— a focus on the SELF above all else: self-care, self-control, self-growth, etc. This fixation excludes the folks from cultures of collective wellness traditions in which yoga originates.

Believing the SELF exists in isolation in this world discounts how we affect, relate to and engage with our environment, with other beings, within systems, and shared practices. It encourages a way of living that feeds the cycle of capitalism, selling the illusion of quick fixes & easy solutions. By buying into that illusion, we bypass the deeper work: of relationships, the discomfort, the areas of growth & understanding we need to tend to in order to move forward together.

Mainstream wellness culture pushes “positive vibes only”, ignoring the wisdom that comes from acknowledging the full spectrum of experience - , the balance, the entire picture, the everything that is actual yoga. The wellness that is only possible when WE do so together. Let’s move from the ME to the WE!

Join Integrative Life Therapy and Electric Cottage Collective for THE VIBE IS A LIE: UNF*CK YOUR YOGA TEACHING…

11/25/2025

What we see on the surface of modern Western “wellness culture” are things like fad diets, dream catchers, the idealization of thinness, whiteness, and wealth—manifesting as $25 yoga classes, Lululemon pants and “namaslay” merch. This is not wellness.

It’s a cultural illness: cultural appropriation, spiritual bypassing, individualism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the commodification of entire cultures. And I say this as someone who used to go to hot yoga almost every day. If I missed a day, I didn’t “feel well.” But… is that wellness? Or is it a more insidious version of our addiction to grind culture disguised as self-care?

Yoga was meant to connect our mind, body, and spirit to “universal consciousness”. But somewhere along the way, it became a workout where we’re praised for pushing past our limits instead of listening to our bodies—bodies that might be asking for softness, rest, and slowing down.

Yoga studio culture often celebrates showing up to as many classes as humanly possible, instead of asking, “Are you okay?” when someone walks in for their seventh class of the week. Let’s start to unravel some of this…

Keep your eyes peeled for a collab between Integrative Life Therapy and Electric Cottage Collective, where we’ll dive deeper into all of this and explore what really practicing yoga and collective wellness could look like.

10/27/2025

INHABIT the space you’re in…

I often like to walk without knowing where I’m going. No map, leaning into the trust I will be brought where I need to go. On this walk I came upon musical sculptures & met the universe’s request to play along.

When I give myself permission to inhabit the space I’m in, something moves me, a deep well of wisdom within, generations of information comes pouring out. And though I’ve never heard the gongs played by my ancestors, I felt them with me here.

05/29/2025

02/16/2025

Check out these opportunities for continuing education at Arcana

12/28/2024

Looking forward to offering this on January 5, 2025!
Whether you’re a New Year’s Resolution fan or not, come try another way of celebrating community, stepping into growth & getting to know yourself on a whole new level 🫶🏽
It takes bravery to try new things…we’ll do that together ✊🏽

This workshop was so good the first time that we’re doing it again on January 5th. Join us for RETURNING TO KAPWA (community)
through collective co-regulation with Anne Esguerra

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Our ancestors have given us more than our features. We each come equipped with generations of wisdom, capacity and resilience. This experience touches into the humanity that exists within us all, tapping into the soma that makes us a community.

Through vibration, movement, breath, meditation and sound we will come together to tap into the ways we’ve always communicated. We’ll tone through the wordless spaces and step into the spaciousness of silence & reflection.

Expect to meet the edges of comfort and discomfort building resilience together.

This form of practice together will touch into the spaces where we communicate through our energy, senses and sound to inspire continued movement towards liberation as Kapwa.

Returning to Kapwa (from EGOLESSNESS by Carl Lorenz Cervantes)
“True egolessness is the recognition that ‘self’ never existed; it has always been part of a whole. Thus egolessness is acting on what is natural and letting things. How, being in the world as a functioning part of it. Ako should merely refer to the individualized self, but it should also imply the self in the context of everything else. This is achieved through pakikiisa, or being one with kapwa. Self-actualization, in the Filipino sense, is finding one’s completeness in kapwa, the community.”

Anne Esguerra (she/siya/niya) is a first generation Filipino American, who’s relationship to identity has always been rooted in the culture of her family. As a c-IAYT yoga therapist and lifelong student of art, music and dance, she has observed the threads of humanity that link us together.

*This is a pay-what-you-can class ranging from $10-$25. Please contribute what you honestly feel you can.
*Registration is required
*All classes are 18+