Free Online Yoga Summit
Yoga, Neuroscience & the Nervous System:
How Understanding the Brain and Body Can Transform the Way We Live
November 21 • 11:00 AM–12:30 PM PT
With Stephanie Lopez, Denise Hatch & Madhuri Martin
To register on Eventbrite, see the link above and use access code TRANSFORM
Yoga has long offered practices for calming the mind, strengthening the body, and cultivating greater awareness. Today, neuroscience is helping us understand more deeply why these practices can have such a profound effect on the way we feel, think, respond, and relate to others.
Our nervous system is constantly receiving information from both within and around us. It influences how we respond to stress, experience emotions, connect with others, recover from challenges, and move through the world. When the nervous system is overwhelmed or chronically activated, we may find ourselves reacting automatically, feeling anxious or disconnected, struggling to rest, or losing access to our natural capacity for clarity, connection, and resilience.
Yoga offers powerful tools for working with these patterns. Through conscious breathing, movement, meditation, relaxation, and embodied awareness, we can begin to better understand the relationship between the brain, body, breath, and nervous system. We can learn how to recognize our habitual stress responses and explore practices that support greater regulation, resilience, emotional well-being, and connection. Understanding the nervous system can change the way we understand yoga.
Join Stephanie Lopez, Denise Hatch, and Madhuri Martin for an inspiring and experiential exploration of yoga, neuroscience, and the nervous system. Together, we will explore how ancient yogic practices and contemporary understanding of the brain and body can help us develop greater awareness of how we respond to stress—and how we can cultivate new possibilities for health, healing, and connection.
Through accessible movement, breath practices, meditation, and embodied exploration, we will consider how yoga can support:
· Nervous-system regulation and resilience.
· Greater awareness of stress and automatic reactions.
· Emotional balance and well-being.
· Healthy movement and aging.
· The relationship between breath, brain, and body
· Greater compassion, connection, and capacity for relationship.
When we better understand our nervous system, we may begin to recognize the space between what happens to us and how we respond. Instead of automatically reacting, we can learn to pause. Instead of being completely driven by stress or habitual patterns, we can cultivate greater awareness and choice. And this transformation does not end when we step off the yoga mat.
The way we regulate ourselves affects the way we communicate, parent, teach, work, and participate in our relationships and communities. When we develop greater capacity to be present with ourselves, we may also become more available to others. When we learn to meet stress with greater awareness and resilience, that capacity can ripple outward into our families, communities, and the wider world. Our nervous systems are not separate from one another. The way we show up affects the people around us.
This gathering offers an opportunity to explore an essential question for our time:
How can understanding ourselves more deeply—including our brains, bodies, and nervous systems—help us live with greater wisdom, resilience, compassion, and care?
In challenging times, we need practices that do more than simply help us feel better for a moment. We need practices that help us understand ourselves, regulate our responses, build resilience, and remain connected to what matters most.
Join us for this free online summit and get a glimpse of what is to come at Yoga Conference SF, May 13–16, 2027. Discover how yoga and neuroscience can deepen our understanding of the nervous system—and how greater awareness of ourselves can transform the way we live, relate, and engage with the world. Your nervous system shapes how you experience life. Yoga can help you understand it, work with it, and develop new possibilities for how you respond.
Meet the Teachers
Stephanie Lopez, LISW-S, C-IAYT
Stephanie Lopez is President and Senior iRest Trainer at iRest Institute, a certified yoga therapist, Gestalt psychotherapist, and internationally respected meditation teacher. With more than 25 years of immersion in the nondual teachings of yoga and extensive clinical experience, she brings together yoga, meditation, psychology, and neuroscience. Her work explores embodied awareness, nervous-system regulation, trauma, chronic pain, resilience, and well-being.
Denise Hatch, E-RYT 500
Denise Hatch is a certified Anusara Yoga teacher and teacher trainer with a background in mind sciences, exercise physiology, kinesiology, nutrition, rehabilitation, and yoga therapeutics. She has worked for decades at the intersection of movement and the mind, helping people develop greater physical awareness, focus, health, and performance. Her work has included professional athletes as well as people seeking greater health and well-being. She has also taught in a Mayo Clinic program investigating yoga's effects on anxiety and sleep.
Madhuri Martin, E-RYT 500, ECATT
Madhuri Martin brings decades of yoga practice and teaching together with a deep appreciation for yogic philosophy and embodied experience. An experienced Anusara teacher and educator, Madhuri is known for making profound yogic teachings accessible through storytelling, movement, and direct experience. Her approach celebrates the vitality of the body while inviting practitioners to explore yoga as a lifelong path of health, awareness, and transformation.
A Preview of Yoga Conference San Francisco
Come experience the teachings, meet the teachers, and discover what’s waiting for you at the 2027 Yoga Conference in San Francisco.
This free online summit also offers a preview of the offerings that will be at the heart of Yoga Conference San Francisco, May 13–16, 2027.
The conference will bring together leading teachers and presenters from diverse backgrounds and traditions for four days of immersive classes, workshops, philosophy, anatomy, alignment, pranayama, meditation, and embodied practice.
At the heart of the conference is a larger question: How can yoga become more meaningful, intelligent, inclusive, and sustainable—for ourselves, our students, and the world around us?
To register on eventbrite see link above use access code TRANSFORM to register
Logistics
Location: Online
Date: Saturday November 21 - 11am-12:30pm PDT Please use this time converter if you need.
Technology We will use Zoom. You will receive the link in the confirmation email.
Reminder emails: You will receive a reminder email 2 days before and 30 min before.
Recorded Video of the livestream session will be sent 48hr after the live session. If you cannot make the time but would like to attend, please register to receive the video link.