BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Gabriella F. Buttarazzi (Uma Shakti Devi) is a teacher, teacher trainer, educational developer, researcher, and writer who currently splits her time between London and Leicestershire.
Her work initially centred on integrating contemplative, embodied, and spiritual practices into higher education pedagogy and curriculum. She is an RYT-800-hour qualified and experienced teacher of yoga, meditation, and sacred sound.
Gabriella has established wellbeing meditation spaces, accredited university courses in meditation, contemplative circles, and integral yoga programmes in both China and the UK. She is the founder of the education and community hub The Art of Integral Being®, and the creator and director of education of the Yoga Alliance Professionals (YAP)-accredited 500-hour Teacher Training Course in Integral Yoga Studies®, She holds a doctorate from the University of Nottingham on the integration of meditation into pedagogy and curriculum, investigating students’ experiences of meditation through philosophical, psychological, sociological, and neuroanthropological lenses.
Gabriella has lived in six countries—the UK, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Spain, and China—and has travelled and studied extensively. These experiences have shaped and sustained her personal practice, teaching, research, and scholarship. Gabriella primarily works with five modalities: yoga, meditation, sacred sound, contemplative writing, and contemplative reading in both education and community settings. She has trained in many traditions across Asia and Europe, including integral yoga, kundalini yoga, yin yoga, dhyana yoga (meditation), nada yoga and sound healing therapies, trauma-informed yoga, Taoist practices, yoga nidra, tantra, vipassana, zazen, mindfulness, and elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine and shamanism.
She continues to synthesise these diverse traditions and contemplative practices with contemporary scientific research, to shape and renovate the coherent, culturally responsive, and creative system of integral yoga.
Since 2004, Gabriella has taught in adult and higher education, developing and leading several university modules for undergraduate and postgraduate students in arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Since 2011, she has taught yoga, meditation, and other contemplative practices to faculty and students, integrating them into pedagogy and curriculum through her Integral Yoga Wellbeing Programme, Consciousness, Creativity, and Wellbeing Series, and Contemplative Reading and Contemplative Writing Workshops, in which she offers a range of in-sessional contemplative practices. Since 2018, she has led institutional transformation through post-graduate teacher training, CPD course development, curriculum reform initiatives, and teaching and learning policy writing.
She also continues to teach, train university teachers, and develop research in contemplative education, embodied knowledge, integral spirituality, and consciousness studies. The reason for this integration is simple: every single experience, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is both an educational opportunity and an education in its own right. This is what education is. The practice of integral yoga, meditation and other contemplative practices from wisdom traditions from across the world are powerful conduits for awakening to our Integral Being because they turn our attention and awareness inwards. It is in this very place, deep within the body, that insight, wisdom and creativity are hidden in plain sight.
Gabriella has taught and/or trained teachers at Loughborough University, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, and the Institute for Creativity and Innovation (a partnership between Xiamen University and the University for the Creative Arts). She has worked at the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the University of East London in teaching, curriculum, and academic development since 2020. Gabriella is a Senior Fellow (SFHEA) of Advance HE, currently working towards Principal Fellow (PFHEA). She was a member of the RAMHHE (Raising Awareness of Mental Health in Higher Education) research team, funded by the Office for Students (OfS) between 2020 and 2022, and a Trustee for the UK charity The Meditation Trust between 2021 and 2025.
Gabriella is one of the founding members of the UK-based association Contemplative Pedagogy Network, and a Senior Teacher and Teacher Trainer with Yoga Alliance Professionals (YAP). She has published her research and scholarship in peer-reviewed journals, has written book chapters in academic books, and is finalising her first academic book on the role of meditation in rewilding and elevating higher education. Gabriella is on the editorial boards of the journals Communities of Care and World Futures, and, together with Dr Warren Kidd, she is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Patterns of Practice: An International Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Gabriella currently runs her education and community projects in London and Leicestershire.
MEDIA KIT
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