EMBER FOUNDERS/CURRICULUM CREATORS
Since 2014, Marybeth and Michele have taught EMBER to hundreds of students. They have also trained hundreds of teachers in weekend trauma sensitive intro workshops and in the EMBER advanced certificate course.
Michele Vinbury
Michele Vinbury is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner through Somatic Experiencing International, a Yoga Alliance registered E-500 yoga teacher and a registered Yoga Therapist through IAYT (International Association of Yoga Therapists.) Michele completed her studies as an Ayurvedic Health Educator through the California College of Ayurveda, has advanced training in hands-on energy healing, and is also a certified iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation Teacher. She studied at Salisbury University and the University of Rhode Island, graduating (summa cum laude) with a BA in Philosophy, minor in Psychology.
Michele’s approach to supporting people who have experienced trauma has evolved over 25 years of direct-contact work with survivors at domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide prevention and human trafficking agencies as well as through her time teaching trauma informed practices to inmates in medium security prisons.
The driving philosophy that underlies Michele’s style is one that considers healing from an unshakable knowing that each of us is already inherently whole and complete. In her 1:1 sessions, she holds space for clients to bring attention not only to the broken, hurt and sad places, but also to the ways that each client is, in this and every moment, complete, whole, and deserving of love. She has found that as clients explore the challenges of their lives from this framework (one wherein every part of their experience, and every aspect of who they are is received as part of their wholeness), deep integration can take place.
Foundational to all that Michele does are body-based approaches; with the primary modality offered being Somatic Experiencing. You might be asking what’s a body-based approach? Simply put, though thoughts, memories and stories are important to unpack, in sessions with Michele, emphasis will be placed on messages that are arising from a variety of places in your body instead of just those coming from your brain! By offering techniques to engage with personal challenges through your body, Michele presents gentle somatic pathways to move through stuck patterns, integrate past trauma, and to regulate and soothe their potentially frayed and frazzled nervous systems.
Michele owned a large and thriving yoga studio in Columbus Ohio for 8 years and is the creator of a trauma informed resilience training (EMBER) that is being studied at an area hospital. She has been helping clients and students to resolve issues of stress and trauma for many years, and is also deeply committed to engaging in her own personal process of healing and growth. Currently, Michele teaches workshops, trainings and retreats locally and abroad. She is happiest when outside, and also finds great joy as a life-partner, mother, stepmother, dog-mom, oldest sister, auntie and goofball!
Michele has taught trauma sensitive series classes to the following student groups through her work:
Mt. Carmel Trauma
Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Survivors of Sexual Assault
Female Inmates at Ohio Reformatory for Women
SARNCO (Sexual Assault Response Center of Central Ohio)
Students at St. Vincent’s partial hospitalization treatment center for kids
Female Veterans and Male Combat Veterans
Clients in IOP at an Eating Disorder Clinic (Center for Balanced Living)
Trafficked Women. Clients of CORRC (Central Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition) and Women of Freedom a la Cart
Staff at psychiatric hospital
Various students at Columbus, Ohio public yoga studios.
Michele is also the lead teacher in EMBER’s Intro, 60 and 100hour Trauma Sensitive teacher trainings.
Marybeth Hamilton
Marybeth Hamilton is co-creator and co-director of EMBER™ (Embodied Mindfulness-Based Emotional Resilience), a yoga and meditation program aimed at women and men in transition from trauma. A 200-hour certified yoga teacher, she has specialized training in mindfulness teaching, prison meditation facilitation, and yoga for anxiety and PTSD. Her teaching draws on thirty years experience as an educator, including seventeen years at Birkbeck College, the adult education wing of the University of London. Since 2010, when she left academia, she has taught mindfulness meditation and trauma-sensitive yoga at the Tapestry therapeutic community at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW); at ORW’s Reintegration Unit for inmates on the verge of release; at Women in Transition, an outpatient program for women in recovery run by the treatment facility Compdrug; in trauma-sensitive classes at Yoga on High; in classes for students and staff at Columbus Spanish Immersion Academy; and in a series of workshops for yoga teachers and therapists. Drawing on her twenty-year immersion in the practice of mindfulness, her teaching emphasizes curiosity, openness, and sensitivity to the body’s innate capacity for restfulness and ease.
