WINTER LEADERS
We are super excited to have an amazing line-up of talented instructors and teachers to lead the Winter Big Om Yoga Retreat. Read below to learn more about the wonderful humans who will be leading each experience.
Hailey Boswell, Death Doula
Hailey first found yoga in college for its physical benefits, but it quickly became a refuge for her heart, mind, and spirit as she worked her way through school. Through her practice, she discovered self-love, compassion, and a deeper connection to her most authentic self. Yoga opened the doorway to a more grounded and meaningful way of living. In 2020, while in Costa Rica, Hailey was introduced to breathwork. What began as a love-hate relationship soon became the missing piece in her practice. The breath revealed itself as potent medicine—healing, transformative, and deeply connective. Since August 2020, holding space for breathwork has been her greatest passion. She treats this work as sacred, offering intentional, supportive containers for others to explore their own healing and truth. After the birth of her son in 2022, Hailey felt called to face her long-held fears around death. Completing the Death Doula Program through the Anam Cara Academy sparked a devotion to normalizing conversations around dying. She continues to deepen her own relationship with death while guiding others to do the same, believing that tending to death with honesty opens the path to living more fully and harmoniously.
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Hailey Boswell will guide us through our opening yoga class + breathwork on Friday night as well as a workshop called “Descansos: Reflections on Living & Grieving” on Saturday. In this workshop we’ll go through a life-review process that involves returning to past stages of our life, mourning what is left to be mourned, and releasing it in order to move forward. The more we practice this while we are alive, the easier and more familiar we are with the process as we near the end of our lives. This is how we die well.
Lauren Lafortune
Lauren LaFortune is a grief-informed guide who helps people navigate life after loss. Drawing from lived experience and nervous-system-based practices, she creates spaces where grief can be acknowledged, integrated, and carried with compassion—without pressure to “move on.”
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Living with the Scars of Grief: Big grief starts out as a gaping wound. Raw nerves, open, numb. As we heal from grief, a scar forms and that scar is something we carry with us in our hearts forever. Those scars are a reminder that we survived. In this workshop, we will honor those scars through somatic work, journaling and group witnessing.
Hannah Bell
Hannah Bell completed her 200 hour yoga teacher training in the summer of 2018 at Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville, California. With an extensive background in the culinary arts, Hannah has a wide breadth of knowledge of what it means to serve. While her yoga classes can be challenging in many ways you can always count on a point of levity. Her teacher, Baba Hari Dass, encouraged the attitude of ‘work is play’. Her personal mantra is to be silly, honest, and kind. When taking her class you can always count on her encouragement to lean into the human experience and all of the complexities it has to offer. Yoga can be whatever you want it to be; a stretch, a breath, an hour to just turn your phone off, or something far deeper. She will meet you wherever you’re at with mindfulness and the intention to serve. She knows the real work is stepping off of her mat and carrying the practice into the rest of the world.
Haleigh Featherly
Haleigh began her journey towards truth and soul in 2010 when her fear of death became so loud that she faced either medication to numb or meeting herself with an open heart. Since then, she has been teaching and studying many paths of awakening. She is 500 RYT certified in Dynamic Hatha from Circle Yoga Shala, where she apprenticed with her teachers for three years. She is a reiki master and has continued meeting and has been initiating in soul and right of passsage work with her teacher Karla Palomino for 3.5 years. She firmly believes that the knowledge we receive in training becomes ours when deeply embodied through devotional practice. Her service is to guide humans into the body, truth, and magic through one-on-one and group journeys of soulful embodiment through descent into our own underworld realms. Haleigh’s teaching style reflects her devotion to honest expression and truth, living and moving with the earth, humor, and conscious labor.
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Morning Asana
“Moving with Life/Death Cycles”
You will be guided through a practice that reveals the macrocosmic cycles of birth and death within the microcosm of your moving body.
Come curious about yourself and be prepared to observe your relationship to this predestined cyclic miracle.
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“Meeting the Death Part of You”: In this workshop, we will practice archetype/persona embodiment to become intimate with the parts of ourselves that fear death and those that fear life.
While these aspects of ourselves can feel intimidating to explore, they actually contain profound wisdom and healing for our lives.
DZ. Hamilton Avery, LMSW, LMT, CYT-100, TITY
Z. Hamilton Avery, LMSW, LMT, CYT-1,000, TIYT (he/they) is a therapist, social worker, health educator, wellness coach, body and energy worker, yoga and meditation teacher, and abstract artist in Tulsa. In addition to having obtained over a dozen certifications in various modalities of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), Z holds an associate’s degree in pre-nursing studies, a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and a master’s degree in social work. When supporting clients and students, Z takes a humanistic, person-centered, strengths-based, trauma-informed approach. Their practice is grounded in compassion, harm reduction, inclusivity, social justice, and evidence-based interventions. Z specializes in working with anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, chronic pain/illness, and suicidal ideation.
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“The Art of Staying: A Gentle Conversation about Suicide”: This session invites honest, compassionate conversation about suicidal ideation and how individuals can support themselves and others during moments of crisis. Grounding exercises will be integrated throughout the discussion to support nervous system regulation.
Joe Picorale, Owner of Be Love Yoga Studios
Joe began practicing yoga in 2010 and is a RYT 200. He was one of the original founders of the I AM Yoga Festival in the fall of 2010 and opened the first Be Love Yoga Studio in 2013. With the help of the growing #belovecommunity at Be Love Yoga Studio Joe has since expanded with a second studio in Downtown Jenks America and two franchised studios in Bristow, OK and Owasso, OK. Joe's passion is connecting people and creating the framework for a community that will change the world. Joe is the creator of the Big Om Yoga Retreat and teaches regularly at both Be Love Yoga Studio Locations.
Misty Love, Death Doula
Misty Love is a certified AcroLove Instructor and Event Coordinator in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She first encountered acro shortly after coming out of a 15 year abusive marriage. What she discovered was an activity and community that promoted healing on many different levels. Acro helped her learn how to develop trust with other human beings as they lifted her up and supported her both figuratively and literally. Along with presenting opportunities to improve communication skills, Acro also provided her with fun filled ways to become more athletic while enjoying non sexual human touch that we all need to thrive in our daily lives. She views acro as powerful healing tool and confidence booster. Misty became an instructor and continues to sharpen her skills so that she could help spread the passion, love, and joy of Acro with you.