Katie Allen, MPH, C-IAYT

Katie received her Master’s degree in Public Health from Tulane University. She wrote her Master’s thesis on Yoga’s ability to prevent and treat chronic disease. She implemented her capstone project at MOMS in Santa Ana, CA with a ‘Gestational Diabetes Prevention Program for Low-Income Post-Partum Hispanic Mothers;’ which included health education and an experiential yoga component in 2006.

She completed her first yoga training in 2007 and in that same year began her studies in Yoga Therapy at Loyola Marymount University with Dr. Larry Payne. She founded a wellness consulting company, Aspiro Health and consulted for the St. Joseph Health System. From 2007-2013 she developed yoga therapy programs for wellness centers, adolescent in-patient treatment facilities such as Newport Academy and organizations.

She opened Be The Change Yoga Studio and Wellness Center in Irvine, CA in 2013 with her teaching partner Allison Prince. Together they have been leading Yoga Teacher Training Programs since 2010, Katie loves sharing the life-enhancing wisdom of the Yoga Sutras as a way to upgrade every single aspect of life and sustain positive health behavior change. Katie launched OC’s first and only Yoga Therapist Training in 2016 and is the Founding School Director for the IAYT accredited AlcheMē Yoga Therapy (AYT) Training program.

She is passionate about bringing the empowerment-based lifestyle medicine principles out of the yoga studios and into under-served communities, as well as into hospitals and health systems.  She utilizes her background in Public Health to effectively build community-based yoga therapy and health education programs to improve personal and community health, while training the next generation of integrative health providers.

In 2016 Be The Change Yoga began collaborations with Hoag’s Center for Healthy Living; providing group and private yoga therapy sessions in English and Spanish for under-served community members. They also created a clinical internship site for their AYT yoga therapy interns to conduct their practicum hours within Hoag’s Community Mental Health Dept.

In 2016 AYT conducted yoga therapy research on an IRB approved study with Argosy University on ‘Yoga Therapy for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder’ with Dr. Bina Parekh.

From 2017-2019 Katie Allen led the yoga therapy programming for Live Healthy OC, a UCI Health | Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute outreach initiative to bring yoga therapy and health education services into FQHC’s such as Serve The People Clinic in Santa Ana, Families Together Clinic in Tustin, and Korean Community Services in Buena Park.

From 2020-2022 Katie served as the Yoga Therapy Program Manager for UCI Health | Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute and developed, implemented, and evaluated group yoga therapy offerings for UCI Care Members and UCI employees, as well as 1:1 clinical services in two UCI Health Clinics. She and her team also successfully implemented and evaluated 6-week yoga therapy and health education programs for Stress Reduction and Restful Sleep.

Katie has presented at the Symposium for Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) on ‘How to Develop and Market Comprehensive Yoga Therapy Programs in Clinical Settings’ in 2017 as well as ‘Yoga Therapy as a Health Promotion Strategy for Underserved Communities’ at SYTAR in June 2018.’ She presented at Kaiser in 2017 on ‘Yoga Therapy Applications for Stroke Patients’. She has also presented for the Orange County Medical Association in April 2019 on ‘Yoga Therapy to Support the Health and Well-Being of Physicians and Patients’. Katie has presented twice at the UCI Medical School HEAL-IM program on ‘Yoga Therapy as an Integrative Health Modality’ in 2020 and 2022.

Her company Be The Change Yoga celebrated 10 years in their Orchard Hills Village location in December 2023 and moved to a larger space in Old Town Irvine to expand their community-based programming. A key feature of the new space is the donation-based AlcheMē Tea House where people can build relationships, decrease loneliness, and increase access to health education resources.

The AlcheMē Tea House is run through our non-profit, the AlcheMē Natural Health Institute; which Katie co-founded in 2022. Its vision is to“provide a new model for community care that cultivates social support, utilizes the best evidence-based practices of natural health, and empowers the individual and collective to live well.”

Be The Change Yoga employs a staff of over 25 and is proud to be the center for Yoga Therapy and higher education in Orange County, CA.

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If you are curious about diving into the rich wisdom teachings of Yoga and Yoga Therapy and are interested in joining our next teacher training program, I’d love to connect with you to learn about your experience with Yoga, your goals, dreams, and aspirations.

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If you are curious about diving into the rich wisdom teachings of Yoga and Yoga Therapy and are interested in joining our next teacher training program, I’d love to connect with you to learn about your experience with Yoga, your goals, dreams, and aspirations.