About Bo Forbes
Bo Forbes is a yoga teacher, clinical psychologist, and integrative yoga therapist with over seventeen years of clinical experience in mind-body healing. She is the founder of Elemental Yoga and Director of the Elemental Yoga Mind-Body Teacher Training Program (currently the only integrative mind-body teacher training in the country that is registered with Yoga Alliance). Bo is also the Founder and Director of the Center for Integrative Yoga Therapeutics™, established in 2006, which offers innovative mind-body yoga therapeutics to clients in the Boston and New York areas.
Bo's in-depth yoga training spans both the Ashtanga vinyasa and Iyengar yoga systems. She has studied extensively with Tias Little in Santa Fe (where she received her Level I and II Teacher Training certificates) and Patricia Walden in Boston. She has also studied Sanskrit, both at Harvard University and with Nicolai Bachman of Sanskrit Sounds. Bo is certified through Yoga Alliance at the maximum 500-hour level, and is an E-RYT500. She serves as a teacher and mentor for many of Boston's top yoga instructors and bodyworkers, was named "Best of Boston," and teaches yoga classes, workshops, and advanced trainings nationally.
Bo has a master's degree in Social Sciences and a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. Her background at the University of Chicago includes training in Biopsychology and Sleep Disorders, Behavioral Medicine, and Stress Management, which informs her teaching, private work, and clinical supervision. Bo has conducted training seminars for health care organizations and professionals in the health care fields, and has consulted to corporations, schools, and health care agencies for over seventeen years in and around Chicago and Boston.
Bo's extensive backgrounds in Clinical Psychology and Yoga have led to the creation of a new focus within Mind-Body Medicine: Integrative Yoga Therapeutics?, which incorporates the most effective elements of yoga (including the physical practice, breathwork, meditation, Restorative Yoga, and more) with a goal toward awakening each client's natural inner capacity for healing. She has also spoken at numerous workshops and conferences on the use of yoga as a mind-body intervention, including Kripalu, where she was a featured presenter in the Yoga Therapy Symposium in April, 2007. Bo will be teaching on the mind-body aspects of yoga at Kripalu in August and October of 2007. She is also a guest teacher in Triad Yoga Institute's 500-hour Teacher Training Program in North Carolina.
In addition, Bo has developed an innovative approach combining yoga and psychotherapy that embodies a marriage of Eastern and Western healing systems. She presented on this work at the 2006 Harvard Medical School conference, "Meditation in Psychotherapy." She is currently in the process of developing training programs for psychotherapists on the integration of yoga therapeutics and psychotherapy. The Elemental Yoga Mind-Body Teacher Training Program was recently designated an approved sponsor for continuing education for social workers through the National Association of Social Workers; the training offers 80 CE credits. And as of April, 2007, Elemental Yoga is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.
Bo writes about yoga and psychology; her articles are frequently featured in Yoga Journal and Body and Soul Magazine. She has extensive experience in public speaking and media, including radio and television, and was recently featured in a documentary on yoga for insomnia. Bo consults to several magazines, including Yoga Journal and Natural Health.