Meet Patricia
Patricia is a sensitive, compassionate, empathic, intuitive, seasoned healing arts practitioner who has been in private practice for over 25 years. Her clients are individuals with a wide range of structural, physiological, and emotional conditions. A survivor of breast cancer since 2002, she has worked with many people who have faced serious health challenges.
In the early nineties, when yoga had yet to explode into the fashionable, physical culture fad it has become, Patricia serendipitously wandered into the quaint, unassuming yoga studio of a dedicated ascetic, Dharma Mittra. In his serene, humble, watchful, and silent presence, she found the encumbrance of constant psychic defensiveness fall away.
Thus exposed and vulnerable within his loving sphere, she felt the support and safety that enabled her to meet face to face with her true self. That day, Patricia was moved and inspired to travel a path on which she might preserve the precious gift she received from Dharma. She aspires to offer a refuge of safety to others where they can experience shedding the burden of their defenses and access deep healing.
Working one to one allows Patricia to give clients her undivided attention. By taking into account her clients’ scope of abilities and limitations, she designs personalized practices that make the full benefits of a mindful, movement practice accessible. She calls upon the techniques she learned and developed, wrought by years of study and a wealth of experience. Her full presence, skill, and expertise has helped myriad people find vitality, peace, and well-being.
She teaches weekly therapeutic yoga sessions at Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center NYU Langone Medical Center; her patients present with any stage of cancer and are in treatment, recovery, or survivorship.
Patricia is a Yoga Therapist at Hospital For Special Surgery and at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital where she conducts bedside yoga sessions with hopitalized children and their caregivers. She also teaches yoga classes at the Mental Health Behavioral Center at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn working with small groups of pediatric latency, teens, and young adults. These are all outreach programs sponsored by The Ronald McDonald House.
From 2015 to 2018, she was the Yoga Therapist at Mount Sinai Chelsea Hospital guiding weekly yoga sessions with patients currently undergoing treatment as participants in a four-year research yoga program to study the impact of mindful yoga practice on breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
She presently provides weekly reflexology sessions for the caregivers of the children with cancer at Ronald McDonald House.
Patricia has been a dedicated practitioner of yoga for the past 30 years. She is certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is registered with the Yoga Alliance at the Experienced Yoga Teacher level (ERYT-500). She was first certified by Dharma Mittra at the Yoga Asana Center in 1997. She was certified by Alan Finger at Yoga Zone in 1999. She was certified by Desikachar at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in India in 2000. She was certified by Gary Kraftsow in Yoga Therapy at American Viniyoga Institute in Maui in 2005. She was certified by Craig Hanauer at Every Kid’s Yoga in 2005.
She is a certified ARCB Reflexologist. She completed 200 hours of study at the Universal Reflexology School, New York. She was certified by Vera Krijin April 2006. She then completed the practical, written, and documentation portions of the National Board Certification Exam for the American Reflexology Certification Board, and became a certified ARCB reflexologist June 2007. She completed a 12-hour CEU workshop in Father Josef’s Method of Reflexology at the Father Josef’s Method Institute, Stamford, Connecticut, August, 2007. In 2014 she was certified in Hand and Face Reflexology at the Laura Norman Institute, New York. She is a member of the Tristate Reflexology Association.
Patricia is a Certified Level Three Usui Reiki Master Teacher. She studied and was certified by Usui Reiki Master Robert Volinsky of Restorative Therapies. She received Usui Shiki Ryoho First Degree in 2002, Second Degree in 2003, and Third Degree Master in 2006.
She has lectured on the benefits of yoga at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center NYU Langone Medical Center, The Brooklyn Hospital Center, and the Memorial Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey.
Patricia has assisted Gary Kraftsow at The Omega Institute, Kripalu, The New York Yoga Conference; and has been a guest teacher at The New Age Health Spa in Neversink, NY; The Gainey Ranch Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Spa-deus Centro Benessere in Siena, Italy.
She has taught a series of yoga workshops at the Memorial Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey for Cardiovascular patients in the Cardiac department. She has lead workshops locally, nationally, and internationally; and retreats in Costa Rica.
She has taught yoga to children at the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning, and 5th Grade girls at St. Aloysious in Harlem. She has also taught yoga for preschoolers at the YWCA Early Learning Centers in Coney Island: Polly Dodge, Roberta Bright, and La Puerta Abierta. She has also taught elementary school teachers at PS11.
Patricia has always been guided by a strong commitment to serve her community. Over the span of her career, she has offered many yoga classes to raise awareness and money for various charities, such as: Make a Wish, Cancer-Care, City of Hope, Share and Care Children’s Welfare Society, and Alaska Children Services. Patricia has offered private yoga sessions and classes to the residents of the Park Slope Women’s Shelter, and Sequoia Community Initiatives, homeless shelters in Brooklyn. She has taught group yoga classes to disabled seniors in wheel chairs at the Kateri Residence, a nursing and rehabilitation facility. In 2008 she volunteered to teach yoga to children with cancer at the Ronald McDonald House in Manhattan, and to underprivileged children at Still Waters In A Storm in Brooklyn.
She has often volunteered her reflexology services for You Can Thrive!, a foundation that offers free health services to breast cancer survivors.
Since 2003 Patricia has been a volunteer Palliative Care Doula with The Doula Program to Accompany and Comfort. She volunteered at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in 2012.