My Background:
After spending my 20s in the food industry, I started experiencing chronic pain from the physical stress of school and work. Through Comfy Fitness, I discovered strength training and body awareness helped keep the pain at bay. Inspired to help people with similar occupational pain issues, I became a certified personal trainer in 2014 and have been a Comfy Fitness Conscious Movement Guide ever since.
My Philosophy:
Movement education and bodily awareness are at the core of my coaching. My programming features a combination of strength building and tension release for an integrative approach to fitness. I strive to help my clients combat pain that comes from occupation, trauma, or lifestyle. Based on individual needs, my instruction can include functional moves like pushing, pulling, squatting, etc, focusing on core engagement and reinforcement, somatic release, and breath expansion with sprinkles of yoga and pilates.
My Location:
Currently nomadic :)
My Interests:
I love to paint and began taking on freelance art projects across America in the last year as I embarked on my goal to become a sign painter and mural artist alongside my role as a Movement Guide. I love to camp and spend time in nature with the people and animals I love; I take great joy in nurturing animals and tending to the earth in any way possible.
My Classes:
Kristina Smith
My Background:
A lifelong fascination with the intersection of spiritual experience and the physical body has led me down many healing paths: in addition to teaching yoga since 2007, I’m also a Visionary Craniosacral Worker, a spiritual coach, a somatic trauma resolution specialist, a student of archetypal mythology and Chinese Medicine, and a retired massage therapist. Over the years, my yoga teaching has evolved into a blend of these practices, intended to integrate the layers of our embodied experience: the material body, the psyche (mind+ emotion), and our energetic or spiritual essence.
My Philosophy:
I aim to educate and empower people to be their own healers using movement, breath, and emotional presence. I help people navigate the wild terrain of their inner landscape - unwinding the nervous system, unraveling trauma, unpacking emotional baggage - by providing the tools and compassionate guidance necessary for the body to process and release whatever is keeping it restricted.
My Location:
Recently relocated to Duluth, MN, from Fargo & the west coast
My Interests:
I love baking, hiking, taking photos of my cat, random road trips (especially to visit wacky roadside attractions and mid-century modern architecture), and I’m a puzzle addict - my latest obsession is chess!
My Classes:
Caroline Cardino
My Background:
I sought out my first yoga class fresh out of college in 2005 when I was looking for something that would give me structure, discipline, and a way to be “healthier” (read: thinner). Luckily, my very first teacher was kind, compassionate, and led the class in a way that made room for me to experience the benefits of yoga that went beyond trying to “lose weight”. I started to befriend my body by simply paying closer attention to them. My yoga practice became an outlet for the Poet inside of me, seeing my body for the first time as a part of nature, of everything around me, connected and interwoven and belonging, just as I am. I have been a yoga instructor since 2009, and a structural integration therapist since 2015.
My Philosophy:
I am a life-long learner of how to be a better friend to myself and my body. It fulfills me to share my ability to be present, grounded, and curious with you - to practice being a compassionate observer so we can become more skillful at deeply listening to the subtle, the quiet, the unseen inside of us. By tuning into Feelings and Sensations as the unspoken language of the body, I guide my students into an embodied exploration of the questions: What does my body want right now? What does my body need? What is there to feel right now? My favorite tools for embodiment are deep breathing, functional core strengthening, restorative yoga, somatic movement, meditation, intuitive movement, and self-massage/myofascial release. Always with the intention of finding ease, grace, and pleasure in the exploration.
My Location:
Chicago, IL
My Interests:
You can often find me wandering in the nearby woods, riding my bike along the lakefront, catching a horror flick, listening to live music (Metal is my favorite, but I love it all), practicing folk herbalism, whipping up something delicious in my kitchen, or tending to my victory garden with the Peterson Garden Project.
My Classes:
Anna Schabold
My Background:
I spent much of my early life immersed in diet culture and treated my body like both a prison -- a space to escape from -- and my enemy. After quite a bit of inner work and through training with Comfy Fitness in my late twenties, I began to see my body as a gift, as my home. I decided to build a container strong enough to hold my experiences and big enough to contain the totality of the human experience. After practicing yoga for almost twenty years, I became a yoga teacher. I’m trained to teach Bikram, Vinyasa, Hatha and Restorative styles. With every day, I expand my technique, knowledge, and skill, both through my own practice and teaching, as well as through study with teachers I adore.
My Philosophy:
I believe that the body is the doorway to truly experiencing life as a full human being. It is a sanctuary and a teacher. In my classes, we make shapes and use the breath to expand and explore both our human-ness and our divine-ness. I believe everyone and everybody can access yoga. I also worship the goddess Rest and encourage us to ‘work less hard’ with a Restorative Friday evening class.
My Location:
Cleveland, Ohio (the <3 of it all)
My Interests:
I am a voracious reader and supporter of the public library system. Mostly fiction (I love a sweeping generational family saga + science fiction) but also what we might call self-help with a philosophical bent. When I engage in movement, I can experiment and indulge for hours. I like making things, sometimes, and dipping into different modalities.
My Classes:
Alexis Koran
My Background:
My love for the body as a vehicle of self-expression and understanding arose naturally from an upbringing in dance and theatre. But my professional pursuit of a life in the arts was plagued by chronic pain. The journey to heal my pain so that I could joyfully experience myself through movement fueled a deeper fascination with the many layers of the body: physical, emotional, mental, energetic, and spiritual. I became a certified personal trainer in 2007 but have since branched off to study and guide others in SourcePoint Therapy, Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE®), Clinical Essential Somatics, nervous system education, and spiritual inquiry.
My Philosophy:
We are living through grossly out-of-balance times, and I truly believe transforming ourselves and our culture must include the body. For me, embodiment is a way toward living into a more proper balance with all of life. In this lifetime, I aim to guide people on a journey of deconstructing their outer conditioning so they may find more authentic inner relating to themselves. Together, we do this through understanding and accessing the nervous system, energy work, meditation, intuitive movement, and self-inquiry. I am inspired and honored to see my clients, through their search for healing and wholeness, find magic in the interdependence of all elements of self and world.
My Location:
Asheville, NC
My Interests:
I feel most myself when I make time to hike or rest in nature, dance, meditate, and travel (anywhere, really) to experience the energies of various lands. I love being part of the volunteer communities at the Center for Conscious Living & Dying and 12 Baskets. When I’m not prioritizing the above, you’ll find me indulging the lifelong learner in me through classes, books, internet rabbit holes, and long conversations.
My Classes:
Full Body Awakening, Tuesdays @ 6:45 pm CT
TRE® Group Shake, Wednesdays @ 6:30 pm CT
Carrie Drapac
My Background:
I am the "gym rat" of the Comfy Team. I've loved movement and exercise from a young age and always fantasized about being one of those aerobics instructors on television - leotard and all. By the time I was 15 years old, I was hitting the gym in the basement of our high school, and by the time I could drive, I was hitting the YMCA at 5:30am. I became a certified personal trainer in 2007 and have since then studied and certified in a variety of group fitness formats, Bridging Technique, and Clinical Essential Somatics.
My Philosophy:
I believe there is something out there for every body, and together my students and I address disenchantment regarding movement - whether from pain/injury, discomfort, or just plain hate it - with curiosity and fun.
In a 1-1 capacity, my superpowers in helping people relieve pain are tied to Conscious Functional Fitness and Clinical Essential Somatics (a slow and gentle movement modality that releases tense muscles and reintroduces your mind to your body). As a committed student of the Nervous System, I bring a plethora of breathing and movement practices into my sessions. Helping others find joy in their movement and, as a result, motivation to move is what inspires my work.
My Location:
Oak Park, IL (In person sessions available by request)
My Interests:
I spend my time momming a toddler, working part-time for a media company where I do Twitch Streaming, Reaction Videos, and Chicago Political Talk, and volunteering and organizing in the political sphere - everything from canvassing and phone banking, to street theater and flash mobs, to lobbying in Springfield.
My Classes:
Clinical Somatics, Mondays @ 7 pm CT
Somatic Strength, Thursdays @ 7 pm CT
Kira Macoun
We are your Movement Guides
About Us
We are on a mission to guide every body into a connected, meaningful, and radiant physical existence. We create transformation for our clients through movement practices that integrate body, mind, and spirit.
After 15 years in business, training hundreds of clients, we’ve learned that all bodies have an injury and trauma history. The story of our lives, imprinted in the patterns of our nervous system, shows up as tension in the body. Tension creates a stuckness through which people lose touch with their bodies, values, and the sense of who they are; We become stuck in ways of moving, thinking, and being that no longer serve us.
At Comfy Fitness, we use movement to unwind physical, mental, and emotional patterns that are holding us back. All of our classes and practices address the nervous system, allowing our clients to uncover patterns, unlock stuckness, discover new strengths, and ultimately experience a transformation of their whole SELF.
Our clients come to us because they feel stuck in the traditional approaches to fitness, therapy, trauma, or healing. Our bottom-up approach, partnered with top-down integration, amplifies the success of any other practices they are already doing. We are blessed to work with individuals who bring an openness and a deep desire for growth and change.
