Kristina Eklund is passionate about emotions. Like 42 million Americans, she is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. In walking her own healing path, she became committed to finding and creating new ways of working with emotions as well as with the aftereffects of trauma. She is the author of The Little Book of Shame, and teaches workshops on healing shame - an emotion that can be especially challenging for trauma survivors, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone who has a sense of not being ‘good enough.’ In yoga studios, Kristina teaches Emotion Yoga, a hybrid class which combines movement with a guided emotion contemplation, and co-teaches Chant for Emotional Well-being with a harmonium player friend.

Kristina currently works at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she helped found the campus Contemplative Resource Center in 2019. Her passion for meditative practices was sparked earlier in her career when she served as managing editor for a major multimedia publisher of meditation, alternative health, and spirituality titles. Her frustration with the lack of trauma-informed approaches to meditation led her to publish an audio program of her own: Trauma-Informed Meditation Exercises.

When she’s not at the university or in a yoga studio, you might find Kristina working to raise awareness of the issue of childhood sexual abuse, speaking out in support of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treating PTSD, or offering seva (selfless service) for her meditation community. She also enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter, rowing, hiking, chanting (kirtan), and immersing herself in the emotional experience of opera.