Light in the Dark by Erica Ann

12/28/2025

Enjoy ❄️💫🔥🧘🏼‍♀️

Lay down, close your eyes and listen 👂

My video cut short because my phone over heated in the sauna. Oops 😬 Growing pains.

https://youtu.be/qmEyLWnJN8M?si=9d1YlRrIHNFE2VrCr

Enjoy a lovely guided mediation and body scan from our sauna ❄️🔥💫 ...

12/24/2025

You don’t have to push through the holidays in survival mode…..

If your body feels stuck in freeze, numb, shut down, or overwhelmed…try meeting it with softness and self compassion.

Slow your breath by lengthening the exhale.

Press your feet into the floor and name what you can see around you. Focus on a color, a texture, a shape.

Wrap yourself in warmth (a blanket, tea, layers).

Allow small, natural movements like rocking, stretching, swaying.

Take breaks from noise, crowds, and expectations.

Regulation isn’t about fixing yourself.
It’s about helping your nervous system feel safe enough to soften, one moment at a time. ❤️

With love,
Erica 🎄💫

12/21/2025

Our sauna is completed and we are pretty stoked for this 💫

Why is combining Yoga, Somatic Movement, and sauna powerful for nervous system regulation?

Yoga and somatic movement gently invite the body out of survival mode by creating safety through slow, intentional movement and breath. This helps release stored tension, improve body awareness, and bring the nervous system back into balance.

Adding sauna amplifies the process. Heat increases circulation, relaxes muscles, supports detoxification, and activates the parasympathetic (“rest and restore”) response—making it easier for the body to let go.

Together, they create a full-body reset:

Calms stress and anxiety

Releases deep tension and trauma held in the body

Improves sleep and emotional regulation

Helps you feel grounded, present, and restored.

Plus it’s cold in Minnesota and the sauna feels amazing 🤩

We don’t need to push the body. It’s about listening and softening and allowing safety to return to the body.

Booking 👉 https://www.lightinthedark812.com/booking

12/21/2025

Happy Winter Solstice 🌲🍂🤎✨

Let darkness bring you stillness.

Go inward to be with the soul energy.

Reflect on the year that has passed and what's to come.

Align with your energy.

Breathe........ tap into your prana.... your life force.

Allow your light to be rebirthed into something magical. 💫

12/14/2025

Happy Sunday!!! In case you missed this. ✨

Dont miss out on early bird pricing. ✅ We can’t wait to see YOU ❤️

Sacred Ground: A Women’s Renewal + Grief Retreat
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

A gentle, restorative day for women navigating life’s losses and transitions.

Join us for an Opening Circle, compassionate guidance on understanding life’s shifts, reflective journaling, restorative movement, co regulation, meditation, sound healing, and a grounding clay-making session. Each participant will create her own clay piece, which will be fired in the kiln and available for pickup later.

Come land in a soft space to honor endings, reconnect with yourself, and step toward renewal.

Early Bird: $195 through Dec 31, 2025
Regular Rate: $225

Pay via Venmo or through our booking link on our website at https://www.lightinthedark812.com/retreats

Location:
Golden Bee Acres
13200 County Road 165
Cold Spring, MN 56320
320-291-9249

With love,
Erica, Hannah & Pam
Hannah's Clay Haven LLCt at dr

12/11/2025

✨Compassionate Presence Listening Matters More Than You Think ✨

If you work in any field where you help people like social services, healthcare, advocacy, education, crisis response, coaching, or mental health….here’s an essential question to ask yourself:

“Am I showing up with compassionate presence listening?”

Compassionate presence listening isn’t just hearing someone’s words.
It’s the way you enter the space with them:

-Your body language
-Your energetic tone
-Your ability to stay grounded
-Your willingness to truly witness someone without judgment or dismissal

The very first language a person reads isn’t spoken.

It’s body language.

For someone who has experienced trauma, that awareness is heightened.

If you show up distracted, dismissive, impatient, or lacking empathy:

— their nervous system will register danger
— their body will brace
— their voice will shrink
— their trust will shut down even further

In moments of high emotion or crisis, your presence is either:

1. dysregulating (closing someone down)
or

2. regulating (helping them feel safe enough to stay present)

This is why compassionate presence listening is not optional.

It’s a necessity.

When you choose compassion…
When you choose to slow down…
When you choose to truly be with someone…

You create the conditions for healing, clarity, and connection.

Your presence is a tool.
Use it wisely. ❤️💫

12/11/2025

Hello, I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fresh snow. There is something about Winter that I love. It's the stillness, the quietness, the slow down. I spend a lot of time in the forest during the winter months. So, refreshing, so grounding. With that being said I would like to invite you to our next retreat coming up in January.

Sacred Ground: A Women’s Renewal + Grief Retreat
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

A gentle, restorative day for women navigating life’s losses and transitions.

Join us for an Opening Circle, compassionate guidance on understanding life’s shifts, reflective journaling, restorative movement, co regulation, meditation, sound healing, and a grounding clay-making session. Each participant will create her own clay piece, which will be fired in the kiln and available for pickup later.

Come land in a soft space to honor endings, reconnect with yourself, and step toward renewal.

Early Bird: $195 through Dec 31, 2025
Regular Rate: $225

Pay via Venmo or through our booking link on our website at https://www.lightinthedark812.com/retreats

Location:
Golden Bee Acres
13200 County Road 165
Cold Spring, MN 56320
320-291-9249

With love,
Erica, Hannah & Pam
Hannah's Clay Haven LLC

12/10/2025

As the holidays approach, just remember......your body’s signals matter. If you feel tension, shrinking, or unease around certain people, that’s your nervous system trying to support you. You’re not “too sensitive” .... you’re intuitive. ✨ You’re allowed to honor what your body feels, even around family.

Lightinthedark812.com

12/10/2025

We made some changes on moving. We are staying right here in Big Lake and continuing to grow with the same mission and vision. So, with that being said please let me re-introduce myself:

Hi, I’m Erica Ann.

For more than 13 years, I’ve worked directly with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and I continue to serve as a domestic abuse advocate today. My work in the advocacy world has deeply shaped my understanding of complex trauma, nervous-system dysregulation, and the profound need for safe, accessible spaces for healing.

For the past nine years, I’ve also taught yoga and somatic movement in diverse settings—jails, domestic violence shelters, one-on-one sessions, and group classes. Through this work, I’ve witnessed the powerful ways that mindful movement, breathwork, and vagus-nerve–supportive practices can help restore balance and reconnect individuals to their bodies.

These practices have transformed both my work and my personal healing journey, and they continue to guide everything I offer. Today, I provide somatic movement classes, gentle flow and Vinyasa sessions, Yin and breathwork, parent–child co-regulation sessions, workshops, retreats, and portrait photography as a form of empowerment and reclaiming self-identity. I’m also excited to offer sauna sessions as an additional tool for grounding and nervous-system restoration.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to complex trauma advocacy. My mission is to educate, support, and empower survivors by teaching nervous-system regulation skills and creating compassionate spaces for healing. Whether through movement, breath, community offerings, or educational content on my page, my goal remains the same: to help people feel seen, supported, and at home in their own bodies.

Erica Ann xo

lightinthedark812.com

11/26/2025

Co regulation tells a person I am safe and I see you. ✨

When we gather in attuned, caring relationships, our bodies start to recalibrate toward trust. From there, discernment returns. Collective awakening happens through seeing the manipulations combined with rebuilding the conditions that make connection possible again.

11/21/2025

So much of the work I do is inspired by his teachings 💫

11/16/2025

✨ Be the Change ✨

Our society still struggles to understand how to support people whose nervous systems are overwhelmed by chronic stress, trauma, and isolation.

And yet….these people are all around us. They’re in our families, our workplaces, our friendships, and our communities. Many of them are quietly surviving what would break most people.

When someone has a dysregulated or exhausted nervous system, what they need isn’t judgment, pressure, or “just calm down.”

They need environments that feel safe.
They need people who know how to slow down.
They need connection without demand.
They need gentleness, patience, and choice.

We can all be part of that change.
By learning about trauma.

By speaking with compassion instead of reaction.

By recognizing triggers instead of dismissing them.

By offering presence instead of fixing.
By creating spaces…big or small…where nervous systems can breathe again.

This is the work I am devoted to: trauma-informed Yoga, somatic movement, Reiki, and spiritual healing for those living with complex trauma.

Healing is possible when the body finally feels safe enough to soften.

Let’s build a world where trauma-aware isn’t the exception….it’s the norm.











https://www.lightinthedark812.com/booking