ig: @kathleenkuhnly

 

Kathleen Kuhnly is Registered Yoga Teacher (Yoga Alliance RYT 200hr) and Certified Reiki Practitioner. Her Yoga Teacher Training from Soma Yoga Institute and teaching experiences focus in therapeutic and restorative practices. She is currently recovering from spinal cord surgery and lives with multiple lifelong late-diagnosed progressive/incurable conditions and dynamic disabilities. At this time due to her health, she is not actively offering many services, this website reflects her passion and long term goals for accessibility and dynamic disability representation in wellness spaces. In addition to being a disability advocate, depending on her health/treatments for her progressive incurable conditions improving in the future, she hopes to continue providing very limited accessible yoga content, nature based mindfulness, and wellness programming for educational spaces. Email tryslowyoga@gmail.com with any questions, instagram: @kathleenkuhnly or facebook: @tryslowyoga

Founded in 2021, "Try Slow" started as a mantra for Kathleen as she navigated unknown worsening health; which she now has been diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and lifelong dynamic disabilities that had gone undiagnosed for 29/30 years despite Kathleen trying to get help, due to no one's fault just lack of education about the conditions and now she feels grateful to have an amazing care team fighting alongside her and to be able to contribute to groundbreaking research to help others. Through her experiences, Kathleen has become an advocate for proper pathways to care and screening initiatives, especially for Endometriosis, Ehlers Danlos, MCAS, Dysautonomia/POTS, Tethered Cord. She also has a Masters of Science in Higher Education and career background in leadership and creating accessible mindfulness  programming on college campuses. 
Kathleen is currently recovering from spinal cord surgery in 2024, and offers limited mindfulness content on social media and please email to connect about other options. 

In addition to organizing wellness programming for students and the URI community, Kathleen also owns her own small wellness business, Try Slow Yoga. Her yoga teacher training and reiki practitioner training were both focused in restorative and therapeutic techniques, and she has extensive experience facilitating accessible sessions with a variety of clients experiencing different levels of pain, mobility, etc. Kathleen has worked with universities, national conference organizations,  corporations, small businesses, educators, and individuals to provide group sessions and wellness programming and services. In addition, she also travels to lead pop-up events, offers individual and group at-home services and virtual sessions via zoom, and specializes in nature-based mindfulness sessions for group events, such as wedding events and retreats!

* limited offerings currently

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Kathleen Kuhnly is a graduate of the University Of Rhode Island M.S. College Student Personnel Program, where she served as the CSP Program Graduate Assistant, with a Graduate Internship in campus wellness and mindfulness event programming. Before returning to school, Kathleen had worked professionally for six years in various education spaces. She previously worked as an Admission Counselor and Co-Manager of the Campus Ambassador Program/Campus Visit Experience at Simmons University, served as a Senior AmeriCorps Team Leader. She also has professional experiences within educational counseling, marketing, communications, sales, recruitment, advising, client account management, social media account management, and digital content creation. Throughout these experiences she had worsening health flare ups, often silently pushing through missing work and barely keeping head up. It wasn't until her health worsened so badly that she was properly diagnosed, and by then she had permanent spinal cord damage. But even then she isn't letting that define her, she is using her experience to help others by contributing to research and care initiatives. Many of the advocacy skills from these experiences are what got her through her worsening health the last few years from irreversible spinal cord damage and tissue/organ damage from undiagnosed conditions like Endo & EDS & tethered cord, and what continue to inspire her disability advocacy work for earlier access diagnosis/treatment interventions. She feels lucky and inspired to be collaborating with her amazing providers on initiatives for more education around these conditions. Kathleen continues to adapt her accessible yoga practices as well, in limited ways as she navigates her unstable health from just getting access to proper treatment this year and being diagnosed with lifelong progressive or incurable conditions. She's not letting it define her, she is accepting her reality and still choosing joy. She is contributing to groundbreaking research and collaborating with renowned providers to increase access and education. There is so much duality and joy within living with disabilities. She does not have the reliability in her body right now to work full time, and she hopes access to better treatments and research in the future will help her health and conditions stabilize, however she continues to accomplish so much through needing to advocate every day for basic care with these lifelong conditions. She hopes to continue to disrupt stigmas around dynamic disabilities and invisible illnesses. To follow her journey, her instagram is @kathleenkuhnly 
 

Kathleen’s previous graduate research capstone is focused on examining best practices for humanizing higher education environments through infusing trauma-informed care and nervous system regulation techniques to support student wellbeing. As a fellow neurodivergent person living with chronic illnesses, Kathleen works to increase awareness of Disability, Access, and Inclusion accommodations and best practices, including educating peers on trauma informed care and nervous system regulation techniques to help increase physiological safety within educational environments and communities. Please see here for a copy of her Educator Guide regarding her Master’s thesis work.