Meet Lauren.
Lauren Turner is the founder of Warrior Within Yoga Project, a trauma informed yoga instructor and business consultant known for her down-to-earth teaching style and collaborative nature. Lauren’s work with veterans and first responders, both as an instructor and nonprofit leader, is making trauma-informed yoga services more accessible throughout Massachusetts.
With a professional background in marketing, Lauren has worked and consulted with businesses in the nonprofit, wellness and retail industry along with many yoga studios and wellness providers across the country. After several years of managing and co-owning a small yoga studio, Lauren founded Warrior Within Yoga Project in 2022 which is providing the veteran and first responder population with yoga, at no cost to them. In 2023 she completed a Business Accelerator with EforAll Greater Worcester.
Lauren has taught in the MetroWest area for over seven years, receiving her initial certification in 2016 from The New School of Yogic Arts in Brookline. She skillfully teaches classes that are engaging, yet accessible. Sessions balance a focus on increasing body awareness, mobility and on techniques to foster resilience.
Her teaching style
Lauren is known for her steady, grounded presence, and skillfully teaches classes that are engaging, yet accessible. Sessions focus on increasing mobility, stability and balance and include breath-work and meditative practices that guide the body back to a state of ease. Lauren invites students to tune into their bodies’ and breath as a way to come back to the present moment. It’s when we build steady focus on sensations of body, breath and mind, we learn how to become more comfortable feeling uncomfortable and integrate our life’s experiences more fully.
Yoga For Veterans
Already trained in trauma-informed yoga protocols, Lauren became called to work with Veterans after the passing of her uncle, an US Army Veteran, in 2019.
“Lucky” Larry was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed his off-grid lifestyle in the woods of New Hampshire. Following a terminal cancer diagnosis, his family turned to local Veteran shelter, The Bridge House, where Larry had many friends, to receive hospice care. In the short week that followed, the staff and Veteran community showed up to support and care for him, giving him the opportunity to pass peacefully with dignity and knowing how much he was loved. Supporting him and his family further, local Veteran Jim Smith USMC + Kevin Young MD crafted a pine box with donated lumber for Larry to be buried in at the Boscawen Veterans Cemetery.
Inspired by the generosity and selfless-service the Veteran community provided her uncle and her family, Lauren dedicated herself to learning how she could share the benefits of yoga with these amazing people. Lauren has since studied with and become certified with Warriors At Ease, a non-profit that trains instructors to have the knowledge and skills to share yoga in a way that is safe, effective, and relevant for warriors and their families.
She currently leads Warrior Within Yoga Project.
“Lucky” Larry MacKeil, US Army
Boscawen Veterans Cemetery, New Hampshire
Personal
Lauren resides in Framingham, MA with her husband and two young sons. With a BA in International Business, Lauren begun her career in Marketing, working at a major corporate retailer for nearly 8 years. After the birth of her first son in 2016, she shifted her focus, using her recently obtained 200 Hour Yoga Teacher certification to teach yoga part-time.
Since then, she has committed herself even further to teaching yoga and over the last few years she has contracted for multiple non-profit yoga organizations, has managed & operated yoga studios and was a co-founder of Common Ground Yoga in Framingham, MA.
Some of her additional yoga trainings include: Warriors At Ease, Sensory-Enhanced Yoga, iRest Level 1 Trained, Trauma-Informed Brain-Sensitive Yoga with the DAYA Foundation, and Yoga4Sobriety.
She is currently in the process of obtaining her 500RYT designation. Lauren is fully insured and CPR Certified with the Red Cross.
