Hana brings a multimodality approach to her teaching that goes deeper than just "training" movement and targets the realm of how we relate to the world at large.

Hana was born to a Persian father and Nicaraguan mother, both of which where running from revolutions in their respective nations. Born in the USA and brought up in India, Hana has a strong relationship with culture, construction of self and communal identities. Having been brought up in India, her journey with movement began at the age of 6 with a traditional South Indian temple dance form called, Bharatanatyam, which she trained in for 7 years in her youth. At the age of 8 her parents got involved with yoga, taking Hana on summers filled with yoga asana and science. Hana got her YTT in 2013, and pursued the path of yoga until she rekindled her relationship to dance.
 
Hana had her first exposure to contact improvisation (CI) at a music festival in the Appalachian mountains. She watched two men roll and jump and tumble, intermittently bursting into laughter. Her body lit up seeing these two men explore play in such a full body and dynamic way. The next day, she took her first CI class and from that point on, she was enchanted by the form. At the time (2016), Hana was in college in North Carolina at the University of North Carolina Asheville. In college she was majoring in Anthropology, focusing on dance as an embodied cultural transmission. Hana was being changed by dance, in turn, she filled her curriculum with dance; taking CI for two semesters, two levels of somatic movement studies, West African Dance, two levels of contemporary and a dance performance and composition course. In this time, Hana also began to travel to study CI as well as the axis syllabus. 

Between 2008 and 2015 Hana had her own personal struggles with disordered eating, depression, substance abuse and suicidal tendencies. Her relationship to somatics and dance/movement research was, and is, much beyond technical training. For Hana, embodiment is a revolution. In a world where we are told we need to produce to be worthy, embodiment invites us into our inherent worth. In a world where we might question if we belong, somatic presence invites us to feel the wholeness of ourselves. In a world filled with fad-diets and sickness, embodied listening wakes up the voice of the body that can guide us to our healthy selves. 

After university, Hana has committed her time, energy, and money to traveling the world and studying different forms of movement, body-mind optimization methods, and therapeutic techniques. Due to this, she brings a multi-modality approach to her teaching that goes deeper than just "training" movement and targets the realms of how we relate to the world at large.
Some of her areas of focus  (in order of depth of study) are: the Axis syllabus lexicon, Contact Improvisation, Body Mind Centering, Fighting Monkey, Authentic Movement, Expressive Movement Arts, Contemporary Dance, Acrobatics, Acro-Yoga, Yoga and certain West African Dance forms.

Find out more info about Hana's studies and influences 


Her passions in life involve exploring  attention-based practices (meditation/breathwork/movement), nerding out on the body, dancing in and with nature, rock climbing, holding trauma informed containers to explore emotions and movement, community, communication skills, saunaing and cold-plunging, holistic nutrition and PLAY!