COMMUNITY HEALING

The Safe Space, A Community Healing Series. Starts January 2026!

Facilitators, Sara VanderGoot & Jodi Askew, have created a thoughtfully-designed group container, The Safe Space, for the community to journey through a much-needed personal and collective healing during a time where the world feels especially challenging to many.

We feel this is a critical time to attune to our hearts, heal and transform what has been wounded, practice the much-needed skills to keep our hearts open, build new ways of relating to ourselves and each other, and create the communities of care that we need and long for. 

We have crafted this experience to support you month-by-month, starting January 2026 through May 2026, to cultivate the inner authority to orient towards your desires and develop the sovereignty to live by your values. The intention we hold for the group is for us to heal individually and collectively so we can bring the gift of our wholeness to the world.  

In The Safe Space, we return to the wisdom that everything is an opportunity for transformation. We gain the skills to shift from a negativity bias to a creation bias, thereby expanding worlds of possibilities.

Sara VanderGoot and Jodi Askew bring together a variety of experience and modalities, including yoga, meditation, breath work, massage therapy, archetypal rites of passage facilitation, sound healing, energy work, cathartic movement practice, doula work, nervous system regulation, creative writing, non-violent communication and conscious relating, conflict resolution, relational repair, and dreamwork.

  • Do you feel caught between two worlds? An outer world where horrible atrocities are happening all over the world and an inner world full of yearning for more beautiful life? Do you feel like one foot is in each world, tearing you apart? Is your energy spent serving the outer world, and grieving the inner world’s hopes and dreams.  

    It’s time to come together and sharpen our individual and collective vision for a more beautiful life, to strengthen our internal resources together, and build the communities we long for. It starts with us, here, now, in. The Safe Space is a community healing container where together we transform the way we perceive what is happening in the outer world, and recognize it as a call to build inner authority, including understanding our roles and purposes as individuals and as a community. In The Safe Space we will all have a chance to learn, experience meaning, and regenerate – individually, and collectively.

  • Sara VanderGoot, CMT, e-RYT 200, e-RYT 500, RPYT co-founded Mind the Mat Pilates and Yoga. She studied Interdisciplinary Yoga with Don and Amba Stapleton in Nosara, Costa Rica and at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Sara completed her Prenatal Yoga Training at Blooma in Minneapolis. Sara is registered through internationally recognized Yoga Alliance as a e-RYT 200, e-RYT 500 and RPYT. Sara is Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, and licensed by the Virginia Board of Nursing. She specializes in working with moms during and after pregnancy and attends births as a doula. She completed her doula training with experienced midwives in Colombia, South America and is knowledgeable about modern birth practices as well as ancestral birth practices and plant medicines. Sara has been practicing massage therapy, including specialties in Prenatal Massage, Post-pregnancy Massage, Deep Tissue Massage and Thai Yoga Massage, in Alexandria for 20 years and has been a yoga instructor for 11 years. At Mind the Mat she specializes in Prenatal Yoga, Post-pregnancy Core Yoga, Mommy & Me Core Yoga, Flow Yoga, Hot Flow Yoga and Deep Stretch. One of Sara's favorite things is teaching in the 200 Hour Mind the Mat Yoga Teacher Training program, which she developed along with her business partner, Dr. Megan Brown, DPT in 2007, and the 85 Hour Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training program which she developed in 2016. Both programs are registered with internationally recognized Yoga Alliance. Before becoming a massage therapist and yoga instructor, Sara earned her Juris Doctorate from William and Mary Law School and was a lawyer in the Washington D.C. area. She found that the healing practices of massage and yoga brought a balance to her life that she had long been searching for. Sara also has a B.A. in English Literature from University of Michigan and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins. Writing is her favorite hobby! Most importantly, Sara has an 8 year old son named Andrew who is her sunshine. She is beyond grateful for the beautiful community of clients and colleagues she has been blessed to be a part of over the last 20 years in the wellness profession and in the neighborhood of Del Ray where she resides.


    Jodi Askew guides each somatic practice - whether yoga, dance, or otherwise - with the intention to support each person’s ability to re-embody their natural state of peace, power, and loving kindness towards themselves and the world. Jodi uses self-inquiry and reflection to guide those who practice with her back to the safety and wisdom within that knows what is supportive for the body, mind, and spirit in each moment.
    Jodi completed her training as a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-200) at Mind the Mat, where she connected a lifetime of personal yoga practice with the vibrant Mind the Mat community and a rich lineage of teachers devoted to yoga. Jodi is also undergoing training as a Maiden to Mother Mentor to guide people at key life thresholds through safe, sacred, and soulful archetypal rites of passage.

  • Thursdays: 7pm - 8:30pm on Zoom

    • Thursday, January 8

    • Thursday, January 22

    • Thursday, February 5

    • Thursday, February 19

    • Thursday, March 5

    • Thursday, March 19

    • Thursday, April 2

    • Thursday, April 16

    • Thursday, April 30

    • Thursday, May 14

    • Thursday, May 28

    *Dates & times are subject to change

    *Virtual sessions will be recorded with the exception of pieces omitted for privacy purposes

  • The Safe Space takes place January 2026 through May 2026 and will be a facilitated circle on zoom.  

    Tuition: $1000 includes all LIVE zoom sessions and interactive community forums.

    Sign Up for complimentary Q & A on Zoom, Sept. 25, 2025, 7-8pm

    Register Now for The Safe Space!

  • Direct questions to Sara VanderGoot at mindthematfrontdesk@gmail.com