About us

A little about our community and wellness guides

YOGAMOTIF is a creative wellness studio that offers art and yoga classes through partner organizations and the community at large.

Resting at the intersection of the healing and the arts YOGAMOTIF recognizes that a regular yoga or movement ritual and participation in creative activities can support well-being - through mindful, autonomous, and creative-based practices, guests build holistic wellness routines that exist beyond the yoga mat. Whether supporting community wellness, pregnant bodies in prenatal yoga, or creative experiences through Yoga Paint Party workshops, YOGAMOTIF joyfully prepares each student for life’s labor and the art, inspiration, and babies they might birth.

About

YOGAMOTIF hosts workshops and community partnerships through two overarching efforts, Creative Wellness and the PostpARTum Project.

Creative Wellness programs include our on-demand virtual studio, Yoga Paint Party workshops and community wellness classes through Pittsburgh partners.

The PostpARTum Project program began with self-guided art and yoga retreats for Black m/others in 2020. Our current efforts reflect reproductive justice-centered prenatal and postpartum programs through local maternal health organizations.

Our Team

  • Alecia Dawn Young

    FOUNDER

    Alecia Dawn Young is an artist and scholar who believes the creative process is an invitation to heal. The founder of the creative wellness studio YOGAMOTIF, she believes that generating art and life are connected and invests her time in people, projects, and communities that explore these practices. Her work is grounded in the collective healing of Black m/others and embodied making that supports mental health. Alecia’s career spans a commitment to community arts education and wellness, rooted in making, teaching, and researching in the visual arts.

  • Dawnbee Kim-Fair

    DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER

    Dawnbee Kim is a yoga instructor and entrepreneur, with a passion for creating content that aligns with her mission of healing and raising the collective consciousness. Dawnbee believes that yoga should be inclusive and accessible to all, regardless of body type, ability, race, gender, or financial status. While also working hard to honor, nor appropriate, this ancient practice. Yoga is a space that allows her to participate in social justice and activism, giving her the opportunity to share within the community.

  • Carrie McCann

    YOGA GUIDE

    Carrie McCann is a yoga teacher, death doula, and plant witch who focuses on supporting people through life’s major transitions. She holds an exploratory and playful space for people to honor endings and difficult moments, acknowledge death, and be with what is there. She draws on her background in social work, breath and movement practices, and nature based approaches to offer practical, emotional, and spiritual support during the different seasons of our lives.

  • Heather Manning

    YOGA GUIDE

    Heather has been practicing yoga for nearly a decade. Her passion for both personal and collective healing has brought her back to the mat over and over again. A graduate of YogaRootsonLocation anti-racist and trauma-informed yoga teacher training, it was through her yoga teacher studies that she was able to join her deep commitment to social change with yoga's spiritual foundations. In her own words Heather feels that her commitment to raja yoga, “allows me to navigate my life with more self-compassion and dignity which increases my capacity to hold that same space for others.” Her yoga classes offer students a chance to engage their practice with curiosity, playfulness, and gentle self-inquiry.

  • Jacquelin Walker

    YOGA GUIDE

    Jacquelin Walker is a lawyer, artist, yoga instructor, and advocate for equity in arts, entertainment, and law practice. She creates spaces for voices excluded from these industries using her legal, creative, and yoga practices as labs to explore the possibilities that open to all of us when we center the care, concerns and visions of the folks marginalized within these communities.

    Walker’s yoga practice and instruction focuses on sharing tools that help others create self-awareness with an eye toward individual and collective healing and expansion, centering principles of justice, joy, rest, and leisure.

Looking for a yoga teacher for your next event?

We are currently partnered with organizations interested in long-term community relationships. For one-time event programs, festivals, or drop-in classes please contact our community of yoga teachers directly.