Vanessa Pattison lives and teaches yoga and meditation in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. Originally from California, she traded the golden handcuffs (they’re real and shiny) for a surfboard. The surfboard is her husband’s but the yoga mat is hers. All jokes aside, she never set out to teach yoga and meditation but now understands that it was her dharma/purpose. Everything in her life was always leading her on this journey, a path to authentically serve others by unraveling her own authentic expression.
Vanessa has 2000+ hours of Vinyasa, Hatha, and Yin training. She built and runs Zen Yoga Nicaragua, the only yoga studio in this cool Central American beach town. Vanessa co-founded Nicaragua Yoga Institute, which runs and hosts yoga retreats and yoga teacher training programs. She is a certified Primordial Meditation Instructor with the esteemed Chopra Center and loves to help others cultivate a solid meditation practice. Vanessa loves to support women during childbirth as a doula. A mother to three boys, all born and raised in Nicaragua, it’s her intention to raise her kids connected to the culture and show by example that to live a healthy life they must help others do the same. Her family cares deeply for the country and especially the kids of Nicaragua, many of whom they’ve known since they were small. You can always find Vanessa with a car full of kids going to baseball or soccer. With a house full of kids to feed. She’s constantly fundraising and all proceeds from her meditation class and a percentage of every retreat go to helping kids have food, clothes, education, and sports programs.
It’s her hope and intention that her classes and retreats are infused with love, creativity, and inspiration. You can think of her classes as a journey of unraveling the layers of stress, that we all accumulate, revealing our authentic, radiant selves. One movement at a time, one pause at a time, one breath at a time.