Carisa Borrello, CHSE

Carisa Borrello is the director and owner of The Living Seed, a Yoga and Health Center, which opened its doors to the Hudson Valley community in the summer of 2000. She is a certified Hanna Somatic Educator (CHSE) through the Somatic Institute of Novato under Eleanor Criswell-Hanna.

Carisa is available for private clinical Hanna Somatic sessions, HSE & Somatic Yoga classes, as well as workshops and retreats. Please contact her using the button below, or at contact@thelivingseed.com.

“Carisa creates a sanctuary, a sacred place for people to deepen their relationship to their spirits through movement, mindfulness, meditation and creative expression.”

I am eternally grateful for the devotion, wisdom and insight that all of my teachers and ancestors have shared with me. Their passion for their arts and for healing the human spirit and mending the hoop of the people are a daily inspiration. I am honored to practice and share the internals arts of exploration – they are gifts – they give us the opportunity to come back to ourselves so that we can heal, love and grow to express our highest potential.

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My Story

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I have always been inquisitive and explorative. When I was a teenager I was diagnosed with MRKH Syndrome, a birth anomaly affecting the formation of the reproductive organs. At the age of sixteen, I was told that I was born without a fully formed uterus and would not be able to have children. This life changing event led me down a path of inner exploration and connecting with nature.

Bringing my hands into the dirt and working with the earth farming for the next four years grounded me. I feel in love with growing plants, learning about herbs, and wild life. I spent my days outdoors. I felt firsthand that what one does with one’s life is the most important.

One day while farming as a young adult, I asked some of the men what they would do if a tree did not bear fruit. They said they would cut it down. I was appalled at their lack of inclusive thinking. I said, “The tree still gives shade and beauty, isn’t that enough?”

I traveled around the world learning about farming, nutrition, meditation, yoga, fiber arts and different cultures. In 1999 I found myself in Florida as the growing manager of wheat grass & sprouts at Hippocrates Health Institute. While there, a co-worker asked me if I wanted to go to yoga class, and by the end of the evening I was signed up for my first yoga teacher training with a new place to live.

For the next four months, I spent every day practicing yoga, growing wheat grass, swimming, chanting, meditating. Life was delightful. Everything was bright and new. After graduation I headed back home to NY. I wanted to share yoga with my friends. One particular friend was in the later stages of cancer and asked me to teach her. I quickly realized that what I loved doing was not going to work for her lying in bed. We did some breathing exercises but I felt powerless… What could I do to help her? What did I know about healing or dying? I sat with her. That was all I could do. I read the Tibetan Book for the Dying, I volunteered for Hospice for one year, and made weekly home and hospital visits. I wanted to teach.

I opened the Living Seed in the year 2000. I wanted to create a space that gave people the opportunity to go within and to create health. A health center. I started with a little kitchen in the back to make juice for people. I asked my friends to hang artwork and we held art openings. I asked other friends to play music and we held concerts. Over the years I have taught Girl Scouts troupes, in battered women’s shelters, at the Highland Residential Center (a state youth facility for incarcerated boys), private residential centers for mental illnesses, in public schools, bachelorettes and birthdays parties. I was a young adult on a mission. We started with Sivananda Yoga and all of the teachers did Karma Yoga. The Living Seed grew, just like a seed in the ground. I started to pay the yoga and health teachers – I hired a front desk manager, different styles of Yoga and other disciplines were brought in and we all grew together. People came, people went, walls came down and others went up. We built a sauna.

At home, only a few miles away, I live in a yurt 3 seasons of the year, built a house and tend to my gardens. I explored movement and sometimes I got hurt. I had to expand and find ways to heal the expression of my body. I continued to study and fill in the missing gaps of information and learning that my being craved. At times I felt lost but everything always worked out well. Fast forward 16 years later and there I was in California training and learning to be an Hanna Somatic Education Practitioner. In February of 2019 I graduated after three years of study at the Novato Institute of Somatic Research.

I am proud of myself, I have skills. I help people, and I can help myself. I am empowered. My journey was from my own doing – trusting and a willingness to learn from nature, and from others. Thank you.