We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liz below.

Liz, appreciate you joining us today. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

Absolutely, I’ve experienced a few U-turns in the yoga industry—and one of the biggest has been the shift from aesthetics and performance-based yoga toward a more therapeutic, inclusive, and function-based approach.

When I began teaching, the dominant paradigm celebrated deep backbends, handstands, and textbook-perfect poses. “Advanced” was often equated with what the posture looked like rather than how it functioned or how it felt in the practitioner’s body. The emphasis was on form over function—and, truthfully, this led to a lot of injuries and shame-based practice.

Over the years, anatomy-informed alignment, biomechanics, and somatic education began to reshape what we now consider “best practice.” Today, we understand that every body is different. A pose isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s all about context, intention, and adaptation. At Soma Yoga Institute, we teach that yoga should be therapeutic, inclusive, and sustainable across a lifetime. Advanced yoga, to us, means a deeper level of awareness and self-inquiry—not the ability to do a fancy arm balance.

This U-turn toward healing, personalization, and embodiment has been at the heart of our evolution as a school. It’s also one of the reasons why our graduates feel so confident teaching real people, in real bodies, with depth, care, and authenticity.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Liz Heffernan, and I’m the Founder and Director of Soma Yoga Institute, a globally recognized yoga teacher training school. I’ve been immersed in yoga for over 25 years, and what began as a personal search for healing and inner balance has grown into a lifelong calling to share the practice in a way that’s accessible, inclusive, and deeply transformative.

I took my first yoga class as a teenager, and the practice offered me a life raft away from the noise and troubles of my self-critical mind. As a young woman, I was caught in patterns of perfectionism, overachievement, self-judgment, and emotional overwhelm. Yoga became the first space where I felt safe enough to slow down, breathe, and begin to connect with myself in a kind and honest way.

That connection became the foundation for my healing and opened the doorway to what would eventually become my life’s work. Yoga offered me something I hadn’t found anywhere else—a way to realign not just my body, but also my thoughts, emotions, and life path. It helped me connect to something deeper: an unshakable, unbreakable presence within—a place where I felt whole and complete.

That sense of inner integration lit a spark in me that led to my path as a teacher and eventually to founding Soma Yoga Institute.

Soma Yoga Institute offers 200-hour and 300-hour Yoga Alliance certified teacher training programs—both in-person and online. Our programs are rooted in anatomy-informed alignment, biomechanics, and yoga therapy principles. What sets us apart is our therapeutic approach: we teach yoga that meets students where they are, honors all bodies, and supports long-term well-being. We’re not here to churn out cookie-cutter teachers; we train thoughtful, compassionate educators who can adapt yoga to serve aging populations, injured students, and diverse needs.

We also offer continuing education programs in Yoga Nidra, somatics, breathwork, and therapeutic sequencing, and we’re proud to serve a global community of yoga teachers, wellness professionals, and passionate practitioners.

The problems we help solve are quite real: people come to us feeling burnt out, injured, disconnected from their bodies, or uninspired in their practice. Our programs help them reconnect—to their own healing, their purpose, and their ability to serve others through the tools of yoga.

What I’m most proud of is the way our programs change lives. We consistently hear from students that their time with us helped them heal, gain confidence, and fall in love with yoga again—or for the first time. I’m also proud that our curriculum has evolved to include somatic wisdom, trauma-informed practices, and embodied pedagogy—tools that go far beyond posture and into the heart of what it means to live well and teach skillfully.

What I want people to know is that yoga is for everyone. At Soma Yoga Institute, we believe that your body is not a barrier—it’s the gateway. Our work is about empowering people to use yoga as a tool for transformation, self-understanding, and sustainable health.

Whether you’re an aspiring teacher, a longtime practitioner, or someone simply seeking deeper alignment with your life, we’re here to support your journey.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

One of the most important factors that helped build our market was staying true to our mission while meeting a real need in the yoga world: offering therapeutic, inclusive, and anatomy-informed teacher trainings that support all bodies—not just the flexible, fit, or able-bodied.

From early on, we recognized a gap in yoga education. Many programs were focused on performance and fast-paced sequences, but lacked depth in anatomy, biomechanics, and therapeutic application. Our programs meet students who are looking for something more—more substance, more safety, and more meaning in both their personal practice and their teaching.

Another key factor has been the expertise of our faculty. Our core teaching team includes C-IAYT certified yoga therapists, E-RYT 500 teachers, and highly experienced educators with decades of personal practice and teaching experience. Many of our faculty members have advanced training not only in yoga, but also in somatics, trauma-informed education, Ayurveda, and anatomy. This level of depth and care means our students receive personalized attention and leave with a truly comprehensive skill set.

We’ve also grown through word-of-mouth and student referrals—because our graduates often say the program was life-changing. They share their experiences and return for advanced trainings, which has helped us build a strong, loyal, and global community.

Ultimately, I believe our market grew because we stayed aligned with our values, consistently delivered high-quality education, and built real relationships with our students. Trust, transformation, and excellence are what keep us thriving.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

I’ve always been a do-it-yourselfer. After 20 years of teaching yoga and working as a yoga therapist, the teachings and course content were second nature to me. But I knew absolutely nothing about business.

When I decided to start Soma Yoga Institute, I was still working a full-time professional job and teaching yoga on the side. I didn’t have any outside funding, so I bootstrapped the entire thing. I used a do-it-yourself website builder, taught myself the basics of online marketing, and leaned into free and low-cost resources wherever I could. I took a few online courses, read up on SEO and digital strategy, and slowly began to understand how to turn my passion into a sustainable business.

I planned everything a year or two in advance and must have launched at just the right time—early enough in the internet era that my content rose in search rankings organically. To my surprise, the programs started filling from the beginning.

There was no major capital infusion, just a lot of heart, commitment, and the willingness to keep learning. What I lacked in formal business training, I made up for in vision, consistency, and deep trust in the value of what we were offering.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://somayogainstitute.com/200-costarica
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somayogainstitute/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somayogainstitute/
• Twitter: @SomaYogaInst
• Youtube: @somayogainstitute3375

Image Credits

All photos taken by Liz Heffernan at Soma Yoga Institute