Today we’d like to introduce you to Alissa Vreeland
Hi Alissa, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I went to graduate school for mental health counseling and when I was in my first semester, I found yoga. I fell in love with yoga and how much it supported me in building a stronger connection to my body, while calming my overactive mind. As I progressed through my grad program, I found ways to integrate yoga philosophy, body awareness, and mindfulness into my training. I always knew the two would somehow link up for me professionally, but I was in my early 20s and just starting to find my footing professionally.
After I graduated, I worked in higher education at a variety of small liberal arts colleges. I really enjoyed working with students and staff in that setting, but I felt like my heart for mental health and yoga wasn’t really integrated. I decided to pursue a 200-hour YTT when I was working in career counseling and feeling really misaligned professionally. I wound up becoming pregnant early on in that training and completed the training when I was 7 months pregnant.
When I had my son– I experienced pretty intense postpartum anxiety, which sent me on a personal journey to heal some of the root causes of what this new life chapter brought up for me. In that work of seeking out my own therapy to heal, I realized how misunderstood anxiety is in the counseling profession and how traditional approaches are so mind/cognitive-based.. but really neglect the body.
This inspired me to open a private psychotherapy practice specializing in supporting women with anxiety and chronic stress-related issues in 2019 (in PA). As I worked with dozens of clients, I kept seeing repeating patterns– and one of the most common patterns I witnessed and could also relate to myself is the habit of emotional repression. I was realizing that the more we repress our emotions, the more anxiety we feel.
Shortly after opening my practice, I started learning about the nervous system and its role in anxiety and chronic stress. This is when all of the puzzle pieces really came together for me. I started to understand that emotional repression leads to feeling unsafe in our bodies and with our emotional worlds– and the more ‘unsafe’ we feel, the more our nervous systems become stuck in a survival state. Chronic anxiety is the result of being locked in a fight/flight state in the nervous system.
I saw so much progress in my clients as we began to create more safety in their bodies to feel.. and to feel in front of another person (me). But around early 2022, when the pandemic was easing and people were starting to deeply crave socialization, I realized that my role as a psychotherapist could only take my clients so far. One of the crucial missing pieces was that even though their bodies began to feel safe with me, most of their other relationships didn’t have the conditions to feel truly emotionally safe (because many of us don’t know how to build emotional safety in relationships– we aren’t taught that!).
This is when I created Root Collective. It was born from both a personal and professional observation that at some point in the healing process– we need to be held in community. Our nervous systems absolutely need comforting and nourishing emotional connections in order to settle into safety and shift out of that chronic state of survival. I wanted to create those spaces for myself and for others so that safety didn’t just occur in the 1-1 therapeutic relationship, but also with peers .. who would maybe become safe and nourishing friendships.
I got Root Collective off the ground in PA, but it wasn’t until we moved to Florida that it really blossomed. We moved to Florida in the summer of 2023 and after reducing my client caseload to focus more on integrating to a new area and healing my own burnt out nervous system… I knew that the evolution of my business needed to be on community healing.
I pursued additional training in how to better integrate yoga into the healing process and that is how my signature class, Somatic Yoga for Releasing Stress and Emotions, came to be. I started teaching this class on Friday mornings, and before I knew it, a community started forming. Women would share during the discussion portion of class and then approach each other after class to offer kind words, encouragement, share a hug, etc. I realized that when I supported my students in grounding their bodies, regulating their nervous systems, and releasing some of what they were holding– they experienced an energetic shift inside of themselves that made social interactions so much more meaningful and heart-centered after class.
It was incredibly beautiful to witness and also really healing to my own mind and body that deeply craved safe spaces to work through my own challenges with releasing emotions.
And that is how Root Collective became what it is today! It is a membership community where we intentionally gather to ground our nervous systems through somatic yoga, and then engage in fun + creative + social activities that help us feel really seen and safe in community with other women. It is the exact hope I had in my early 20s of combining yoga with mental health support– but that I couldn’t see clearly until it evolved in front of me.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t!
I felt really lost professionally for a lot of my 20s. I was working in higher education and kept feeling a pull that I wasn’t doing what I was meant to be doing. I couldn’t exercise my creative energy enough and my heart for mental health support and yoga wasn’t being really fulfilled. I stayed with it for about five years because I needed a stable income, but 2019 is when I decided to start my private practice on the side– devoting one or two nights a week to see clients after work while my son was about a year and a half old. It was a lot to juggle– but I knew I was building something that would soon support me in leaving higher ed so that I could solely pursue private practice.
And then I had my daughter in February 0f 2020 when my son was about 2.5… and 6 weeks after she was born, RIGHT when I was about to head back into the office to start seeing a few clients after maternity leave– the world shut down with the pandemic. I had to move my entire practice online, which I really did not want to do and never planned to do… but had to pivot to keep my practice running.
Through most of the pandemic, like many of us, my husband and I juggled working while having the kids at home with us. I powered through it, but it took a major toll on my mental health to be in a constant state of emotionally ‘giving’ to others: two young kids at home and a full practice of supporting clients through a very emotionally taxing time.
When we moved to Florida, I knew I needed to hit the ‘pause’ button and try to focus on myself to heal how exhausted my mind/body had become. I took a lot of yoga classes, sat on the beach alone, went for long walks/bike rides.. and just spent time going inward, slowing down, and trying not to be everything to everyone.
I felt so much more rejuvenated after some time, but I knew I couldn’t go back to the 1-1 model as my main business. It no longer felt life-giving. So I had to go back to the drawing board again to figure out how I could evolve my business to support what I needed now… some type of movement/yoga infused model and also more community/groups focus. I wanted to build out the Root Collective business that I started in PA, but had no idea how. I wound up hiring a business coach shortly after I pursued additional training in Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma. And with the combination of that training and the support of my business coach, I slowly started to see how Root Collective could shape into a business that checked all the boxes I was craving.
As you know, we’re big fans of Root Collective, LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Root Collective is mostly about healing in community. In its current form (though I am always open to the evolution that naturally occurs as I change and life changes) it is a monthly membership community for women.
Inside this monthly membership, women have access to my signature class: Somatic Yoga for Releasing Stress and Emotions. I teach this class every Friday morning at Mind Body Medicine of Florida in Sarasota. It is a 90 minute class that combines education about the nervous system, a class theme, discussion, journaling, and somatic movement/yoga all in support of regulating the nervous system and releasing pent-up stress and emotions from the body in a safe and nurturing space.
The membership also includes two additional events per month, usually on the weekends. The events infuse creativity, time in nature, being playful, and building connections with other women inside the community. We often begin our time together with some sort of grounding to our nervous systems — either a somatic yoga practice, or a meditation/intention setting practice.. and then we just enjoy time together doing something unique and nourishing. AND it includes a growing online library of 15-20 minute somatic videos to support our emotional needs.
I am so proud of the depth of connection that has formed inside the community. Women have spoken to exactly the thing that was on my heart when I created it, the power of community healing. The beauty of recreating ‘the village.’ The comfort of not having to do ‘healing work’ alone. Women have become each other’s cheerleaders and supporters while also just experiencing the life-giving benefit of being able to keep their nervous system’s regulated while connecting with others. This is so impactful and crucial in re-wiring the brain and re-training the body to not ‘hide’ or try to ‘fit-in’ socially at the expense of our authenticity.
My classes are also open at a drop-in rate on Fridays. And I do host about one free, large event per quarter that is open to anyone.. members or not.
Right now we have about 50 members inside of Sarasota’s Root Collective community since launching the membership on December 1, 2024. My BIG dream is to have Root Collective communities popping up all over the world as I teach other therapists/yogis how to create somatic healing communities in their own towns/cities.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I love the Being Well podcast by Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson and the Good Inside podcast by Dr. Becky.
I really love Arielle Schwartz’s books, she is who I trained under for Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery.
The Whole-Brain Child by Dan Siegel is a book that forever changed my view on parenting and also helped me understand the brain so much more tangibly.
And I love any of Brene Brown’s books.
Pricing:
- Monthly membership – $68/mo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joinrootcollective.com
- Instagram: /alissavreeland
Image Credits
Samantha (Sami) Hobbs: Your Inner Wisdom
