Heather Stang, MA, C-IAYT, is the author of Mindfulness & Grief and the forthcoming guided journal, From Grief To Peace. She is founder of the Mindfulness & Grief Institute, where she facilitates Awaken, a mindfulness-based online group, offers individual sessions, and hosts the Mindfulness & Grief podcast.
She is best known for teaching leaders and caregivers how to use mindfulness-based techniques to reduce stress, cope with grief, and cultivate personal growth. Her work is inspired by her own journey of love, loss, and post-traumatic growth.
Heather discovered yoga and mindfulness while she was the CEO of a web development company and diagnosed with a stress-related illness. These contemplative practices inspired her to live a life in service to others, and she became a suicide/crisis hotline call specialist in honor of her uncle who died by suicide when Heather was a child. Heather also volunteered as a trainer and call specialist on the New Orleans hotline just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, and was a research assistant for a NIMH funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Research Project. This experience inspired her to pursue a master’s in thanatology (death, dying, and bereavement) from Hood College in 2010.
Struck by the parallels between mindfulness, yoga, and contemporary theories of grief, which focuses on the individual’s direct experience of loss and the benefits of meaning making and post-traumatic growth, Heather developed a Yoga for Grief course, an 8-week program uniting yoga, meditation, journaling, expressive arts, and death education.
Heather is on the advisory board for the military family survivor organization Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and offers professional training to the Association of Death Education and Counseling, Hospice Foundation of America, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.