About

Jennifer Edwards is a writer and teacher focused on stress reduction, health, and leadership. She blogs for The Huffington Post, writing about health care, pubic policy, and wellness. Jennifer also leads seminars for organizations including the American Heart Association, Columbia University Medical Center and New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and she has authored and contributed to many articles on the subject of stress management. Jennifer has a private practice in New York City through which she teaches individuals and organizations to ‘Live, Listen, and Lead in Complete Self-Alignment’.

Ms. Edwards began teaching people to reduce stress and experience relaxation 10 years ago. While working as a choreographer and teacher in New York City, she began teaching cancer patients, through Cancer Care and Gilda’s Club, to reconnect to their bodies. Based on techniques she used to manage her own chronic stress, she crafted practical daily exercises to aid her students in feeling empowered in their experiences: physically, emotionally and mentally.

Jennifer Edwards holds an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in dance, is a highly trained yoga and meditation teacher and was a professor of dance for many years. She values the need for real education around stress, a primal process that is widely acknowledge as a factor in heart disease, cancer, obesity, suicide, accidents and depression. Her teaching is grounded in the physical process of stress and incorporates the time-tested wisdom of western and eastern practices, psychology, neurobiology, creativity and common sense. Edwards approaches stress reduction by putting practicality, simplicity and immediacy first. Stress reduction happens in the moment and daily, as the stress system is engaged, she maintains. Relaxation is not a luxury — stress management is not a luxury; it is a necessity.

Education and Training:

Jennifer Edwards MFA, RYT holds a Master’s degree of Fine Arts from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and was a professional dancer, choreographer and college professor of dance for many years. Ms. Edwards was certified to teach Yoga and Meditation by Kirin Mishra (Parvathi Nanda Nath Saraswati). In doing so, she entered into a 5000 year-old lineage of yogis. In the words of Ms. Mishra:

“A ‘yogi’ is someone who is willing to be alive… I mean really alive in that we are willing to seek the truth, have the courage to stand up for it and [are] willing to do all this with peace of mind and equanimity rather than out of re-activeness. It is someone who is seeking this supreme state of consciousness in everyday moments, and what that becomes is living life in skillful action.”

This is a definition and philosophy Ms. Edwards embraces, lives and teaches.