Denise Carrico, Chaplain, BFA, Certified Integral Yoga Teacher

A lifelong artist and seeker, Denise originally found a spiritual home in the beautiful, heartful practice of Yoga and has been offering classes, workshops, and retreats for over 35 years. She hopes to make the teachings and the practices of both Yoga & Meditation open to all who wish to deepen their relationship with themselves, to become kinder, more tender, and more intimate with their bodies and hearts, and ultimately expand that out to the wider world, for the good of all beings. Her practice is rich and integrated – using breath, mindfulness, Metta meditation, Yoga therapy, somatic movement, stillness, rest, poetry, and art – and is both gentle and therapeutic. 

Grounded in this long-time practice and teaching, and coming to recognize her own long-held sorrows and how they have impacted her life, Denise set out on a path to explore grief and loss, both her own as well as the universal experience of grief. What she discovered is that we are a culture in grief and the healing of grief requires deep attention, our great love and a safe community in which to welcome and tend our broken hearts. Her wish became to extend the Yogic practices even farther out to offer a space for all of us to do just that.

As a Chaplain (trained in the Buddhist tradition through Upaya Institute & Zen Center in Santa Fe NM) and a Compassionate Bereavement Care Yoga Provider (through the work of Dr. Joanne Cacciatore), upholding the vows of care, kindness, and compassion in a world that is suffering is an integral part of what Denise brings into her work in the world. And moving in the space of grief and sorrow, grounded in the breath and the body, is elemental and necessary.     

Denise is a part of the esteemed Faculty of Harmony Hill and here has found a place in which to gather with others where “healing is an act of communion” (bell hooks). She leads one to three-day Yoga & Meditation Wellness Retreats and offers a variety of Grief Programs including an ongoing, virtual Living with Loss circle, a quarterly one-day gathering, and a 2-day overnight retreat. She also co-facilitates Harmony Hill’s signature 3-day Cancer Healing Retreats as well as the 2-day Health Professional Renewal Retreats. 

Denise offers weekly Yoga & Meditation classes for both the cancer and the wider communities, in person and online. And serves as a volunteer Chaplain at Mason General Hospital and as a hospice volunteer with Providence SoundHomeCare & Hospice.

When not leading programs or gathering in circles, she walks the quiet woods of Harmony Hill every day as a spiritual practice with her dog Mickie (and sometimes her cat Bella) and hikes the mountains of the Olympics as often as possible. She cherishes what is holy and beautiful in this world: her grandchildren, the body in motion, calligraphy, the rivers and forests, art, poetry, & kindness. These words of St Teresa of Calcutta guide her life and work: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”