Meet Maia Anin
Hello… and welcome. My name is Maia. I’m an Accredited Social Worker and trauma sensitive yoga teacher specialising in women’s health, trauma, grief and loss.
I believe in the powerful potential of exploring and nurturing healing through connecting with the body, breath and movement therapeutically, in collaboration with evidence based counselling approaches. In embracing an embodied and integrated approach, I invite women to navigate a journey towards empowered healing.
My journey
As early as my teenage years, I have had a long held fascination with understanding women’s health and the impact movement has on our wellbeing, especially mental and emotional. Continuing into my adult years, this fascination extended into encompassing the social justice issues impacting women evolving into a deep passion which lead me into almost three decades of supporting women through social work, community education, counselling as well as yoga teaching.
In being privileged to support countless women through times of change and adjustment, grief and trauma, my commitment to advocating for their empowerment through their many stages of life has continued to grow. Working in a diversity of community organisations and within a public health system, I have always pursued a focus in understanding issues affecting women, their experiences of trauma and the resulting impact on their health and wellbeing.
The strength, adaptability and vulnerability of women that I have witnessed over the years has driven my pursuit of seeking greater social change through shifting the barriers to equity and healing for women.
Understanding the impact of trauma alongside the hormonal and life transition phases experienced by women over their lifetime, in collaboration with extensive training and practice of yoga and body and breath based practices, has culminated in my heart’s work of combining my training and experience as a both social worker and yoga teacher.
Drawing on academic study in Social Work (first class honours) and post graduate qualifications in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health as well as Bereavement Counselling and Intervention, together with a diversity of trainings in perinatal grief and loss, trauma, domestic violence and pregnancy option counselling, I sought to find a way to bring the body into the healing journey for the women I supported.
I knew from the countless women stories I had heard there was a missing piece to their healing, especially when experiencing the challenges of hormonal change and transitions brought about from women’s specific health experiences.
After years of a personal yoga practice, I fulfilled a dream to complete my teacher training, specialising in women’s health and the support yoga practices can offer. Along this path I discovered Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga and commenced a journey of bringing all I believed in, along with my training and experience, to weave together all three spheres of learning, experience and passion in offering space for embodied and empowered healing. Adding to this tapestry, I have commenced Somatic Experiencing (SE®) training, bringing further avenues to explore healing of trauma from the body up.
This has allowed me to have an integrated approach to facilitate and support personal choice and self compassion for where a woman is at each time she works with me. Through offering compassionate support, through a trauma informed, somatic framework of mind body practices, I seek to facilitate and hold a safe space to support her as she navigates change, healing and reconnection to a greater felt sense of her body and self.
