Wambui Njuguna-Räisänen is a Kenyan-American currently based in rural Portugal, passionate about slow healing through trauma-informed yoga. Wambui's root lineage has been Ashtanga Yoga, which she began practicing in 2008 and teaching in 2010. She began her studies in Trauma-Informed Yoga when the implications of the #metoo movement shed light on the abuse that took place in the Ashtanga Yoga lineage. Shortly after, Wambui created Ashtanga Intersections: Emergent Healing Spaces, which combines the wisdom of an established yoga lineage with the expansive world views of a diverse range of healers, thinkers and visionaries. 

Wambui received certification to teach in 2020 through Nityda Gessel and the Trauma Conscious Yoga Institute. She has also trained with the OmPowered Facilitation for Trauma + Transformation; Teaching Yoga for Refugees, Immigrants and Asylum Seekers by Yoga Mala; Yoga for Self-Regulation + Trauma with Hala Khouri and Off the Mat Into the World; Skill in Action's 200 hour immersion with Michelle C. Johnson; Trauma-Informed Yoga + Embodied Mindfulness with Prison Yoga Project; and she most recently completed her certification with Zabie Yamasaki's training Transcending Sexual Trauma through Yoga.

In 2022, Wambui moved to the Portuguese countryside to reclaim both her self- sovereignty and deep symbiosis with the Land. You can often find her, along with her two children and their friends, at the riverside, gently and softly disrupting the installation of patriarchal, white supremacist conditioning by offering oranges, sweet cakes and honey to the Yoruban Goddess, Oshun. The children get it. They remember their magic and it’s her great honour to remember to remember alongside them, stewarding the next generation of male-identifying children to value and honour the feminine principle of life.

Wambui is deeply inspired by spiritual teachers and communities that seek ways to apply the insights from our various practices and teachings to situations of social, racial, political, environmental and economic suffering and injustice.

She would like to see wellness spaces engage more in collective liberation  and activist spaces learn to breathe deeply and practice sustainable self-care in the midst of dismantling systemic oppression. This is her definition of community care.