Claire Santos is an international yoga and meditation teacher, existential coach, and former Marine with over 30 years of meditation study and practice who has been teaching since 2010.
She has spent the last two decades studying trauma, its causes, and effects for the individual as well as the community at large and exploring mindfulness and yoga-based interventions for resolution of internal barriers, increased resilience, and a greater capacity to enjoy daily life. In 2010, after nearly a decade of dedicated study, she began working with various populations, primarily Veterans and people in underserved and marginalized communities affected by trauma.
Claire is the founder of 21 Grams, a Charlotte-based nonprofit dedicated to increasing trauma awareness and increasing access to resources that exist to increase both the understanding of trauma and cultivate more resilience to the community, particularly to frontline caregivers and community leaders in addition to those dealing with the effects of trauma in themselves. Claire has served as a board member for Mindful Heart, a 501c3 based in Atlanta Georgia and as National Trauma-Informed Yoga and Outreach training faculty for Connection Coalition, a Miami Florida based 501c3.
She brings a unique perspective to this work gained through her personal experience with trauma and PTSD and professionally in an exceptionally diverse range of settings including military, government, nonprofit, for-profit, retail and service industries, entrepreneurship, business development, community building and activation, and more.
She specializes in guiding students to a place of personal empowerment and global consciousness through mind, body, spirit integration by offering universal spiritual teachings in an accessible, grounded, modern and often fun way that makes them easy to not only grasp but apply immediately to the business of living the best life possible.
Claire has been creating curricula, offering workshops and yoga teacher training, as faculty and lead, and offering coaching and consulting to other professionals looking to do the same for nearly a decade, during which time she created the curriculum for five Yoga Alliance Approved Yoga Teacher Training programs in addition to countless workshops, courses, and retreats. She is the founder of 12 Sparrows Yoga School and has been offering successful and highly rated Yoga Alliance approved 200 and 300 hour YTT programs online since the beginning of COVID.
Claire is currently based in Charlotte, North Carolina where she leads private and group practices, meditation and mindfulness events, coaching, consulting, yoga teacher training, trauma-informed education, and Mindbody Integration services primarily online and occasionally in person. She is available for speaking engagements, training, retreats, private and group coaching.