Creative Mentorship for Writers and Musicians

I offer one-on-one creative and professional mentorship to writers and musicians. If you are seeking feedback on a song or piece of writing, more accountability around your creative practice or logistical support around promoting your creative work (and help balancing those two very different sides of the brain), or just some emotional resourcing around the often pretty dizzying and disheartening work of being a freelance artist in 2025- i’m here to help you feel more magical, empowered, and clear about what you are up to.

Why me?

I am a poet, musician, and trauma-informed yoga instructor with 15 years of experience offering creative writing and mindfulness workshops. My music has been noted in Relix magazine and featured on NPR, and my non-fiction and poetry has been published in Poetry, elephant journal, The Huffington Post, Barrow Street Journal, The Faster Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and USA Today. I am the recipient of a fellowship at The Vermont Studio Center and in July 2020 I completed an MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson. Since returning to my hometown of Charlottesville, I have continued to write poetry and music, as well as record, perform, and manage all the logistics of booking, promoting, and touring with a band.

Also: I am a sober artist, and know intimately how much courage, grit and self-awareness is required to do this work while maintaining relative health and consciousness. My background as a trauma-informed yoga instructor also allows me to help students understand the role of stress on the nervous system and the importance of physical health in sustaining creative work.

My varied background as an artist and teacher enrich my ability to help others find and kindle their own light, in a way that is gentle, sane, and sustainable. (One of my mentees so far suggested I call what i’m doing "how to be a HEARTist" so in addition to helping you with time management or submitting to playlists and publications, that seems like a fair description of what i’m up to here.)

Sessions can take place in person or remotely and editing work and meetings are on a sliding scale hourly scale of $50-$100, depending on your needs. Please email me at nightteachermusic@gmail.com to start the conversation and join the mailing list here to stay tuned to workshops and group offerings.

Body Song Yoga

The principle of self-trust is at the heart of what is damaged by traumatic experience, and restoring it is at the heart of recover 

My yoga teaching practice, Body Song Yoga, evolved out of my training in the Kripalu Yoga tradition, the Trauma-Sensitive Yoga model as developed by Bessel Van der Kolk, and the principles of Body-Mind Centering.  Since 2007, I have brought yoga to studios, private homes, libraries, churches, homeless shelters, kindergarten classrooms, bachelorette parties, prisons, juvenile detention centers, board retreats, birth blessings, nursing homes, veterans’ hospitals, rehabs, and crisis stabilization centers.

In 2010, I studied and trained with Bessel Van der Kolk, author of Body Keeps the Score, in a trauma-informed approach to yoga, and in 2012, I developed and lead the first trauma-informed yoga program at the James J. Peter’s Veterans Hospital in the Bronx. In 2014, through the support of The Give Back Yoga Foundation, I conducted an interview series called At Attention, At Peace, highlighting the voices of veterans, therapists, and politicians to explore holistic health and its evolving role in addressing the mental health crisis within the military. Excerpts of this series were featured in The Huffington Post, elephant journal, and the 2017 book Best Practices for Yoga with Veterans.

I sometimes lead Embodied Expression retreats, which combine creative writing and trauma-sensitive yoga to empower students to move towards greater clarity, self-trust, and healing. Join my mailing list here to stay tuned to those offerings or contact me at nightteachermusic@gmail.com if you would like me to lead a retreat at your studio or place of work.

I also offer Principles of Trauma-Sensitive Yoga workshops for yoga teachers, therapists, and educators interested in understanding the foundations of this practice and how it can be integrated into their personal and professional work. Contact me at nightteachermusic@gmail.com if you would like me to lead a workshop at your studio or place of work!

More about Embodied Expression: 

This workshop celebrates the connections between the power of language and the riches of Yoga. Through a combination of reading, writing prompts, group discussion, meditation, and yoga, we will explore these central questions: 

• What is the relationship between listening to our bodies and listening to ourselves? 

• What are the connections between the effects of traumatic experience as they can reside in our bodies, as well as our voices? 

• What stories might our bodies have to tell, that our bodies are not yet aware of? 

• Where are we stifled, silenced, in pain, and what happens when we allow ourselves more time to listen, more room to move?  

• How can we find more courage and creativity on our mats and the page? 

• What structures of support can we create so that we are writing, and practicing, more often?

• What might it look like to transform our greatest doubt and pain, into our greatest power? 

Sharing of writing is welcome, but 100% optional from beginning to end and a trauma-sensitivity will be reflected in the structure and guidance of the class. Students will leave with: 

• A foundational understanding of the physiology of extreme stress

• Selections of poetry, non-fiction, and fiction 

• Writing prompts

• Resources and ideas for further writing and yoga practice

More about Principles of Trauma Sensitive Yoga: 

Drawing from my teaching and research experience as well as my training with Bessel van der Kolk, this workshop will serve as a foundation for those interested in a conversation about yoga as a support for healing trauma. In our time together, we will: 

• Explore the basic physiology of Traumatic Stress

• Experience an hour and 15 minute Trauma-Informed practice

• Discover the foundational principles of a Trauma-Sensitive Approach

• Consider how this practice can serve us in a traditional or therapeutic setting

• Discuss how trauma manifests in our bodies, our lives, and our culture

• Learn how other participants are integrating mind-body approaches into their therapeutic practice and teaching

A trauma-sensitivity will be reflected in the structure and guidance of the class. Personal sharing is welcome but always optional. Students will leave with: 

• A foundational understanding of the physiology of extreme stress

• Comprehensive notes and resources for further study

• New found connections with other yoga students, teachers, therapists, and educators

Testimonials

Lilly helped me through one of the hardest times of my life. She is an extraordinary teacher.

 — Edward

To many beginners the world of yoga is bewildering, it's everywhere and yet so inaccessible. Lilly is a guiding light which led me into this world with patience, wisdom and enthusiasm. Private sessions allowed a space to discuss the philosophy of yoga and revealed to me a surprising simplicity.

— Helen

Lilly's classes are very fluid and never rigid; I never know what we're going to be doing when I arrive at the studio, and it always seems to hit the right spot for me—every time. I always feel way better in form and shape and state of mind when I leave the studio after a practice with her. For me, practicing yoga used to mean a set of postures that I had to do as beautifully as the teacher—and in my mind I never got it right. In Lilly's class, however, I can't do anything wrong. And I enjoy myself immensely.

— Sissel

What makes Lilly Bechtel's teaching distinct is her unfailing attention to, curiosity about, and deep listening to you as her student. While her knowledge of her own system and practice is vast, when she is guiding a student, she is re-translating that knowledge to your breath and body and to where you are at the moment. It's a gorgeous thing and this skill makes her particularly wonderful.

— Kay

Lilly’s thoughtful and loving presence for my birth blessing class was exceptionally delightful. I whole heartedly recommend mothers to be to look into gifting themselves and their loved ones with this sacred practice with Lilly to either begin or punctuate their celebratory day.

— Sidney 

Lilly created a beautiful and purposeful yoga practice and meditation session for myself, my husband and our guests on our wedding day. She created a heart opening, joy-filled and contemplative practice sharing her enormous grace and skills as a yogi and facilitator. We're so pleased to have shared our most memorable of days with Lilly.

— Jenna 

Lilly Bechtel gave me individual yoga lessons over a couple of years. She was careful to adjust her recommendations to my stated wishes for progress in alignment and offered suggestions that were very helpful. She taught me principles of movement, to which I, still, refer. Best of all, she taught me that even when I do not have stated principles to which to adjust myself, in a given exercise, I can find them through careful work. This has been a wonderful gift.

— Sonia

 I really enjoyed Embodied Expression: A Creative Yoga Workshop! Lilly connected two of my practices in a helpful and beautiful way. The workshop had a very calming, grounding effect that stayed with me after I left.

— Jennifer

Lilly Bechtel gave my husband and I private yoga instruction over a period of eight months in our Brooklyn home. We are both in our sixties, with different levels of experience and limberness. Whether we were following her through a guided relaxation or a challenging series of poses, we always felt supported and challenged. Her precise use of language and her gently soothing manner helped us to calm our minds and listen to our bodies. After a session with Lilly we always felt renewed and refreshed. She is a uniquely gifted yoga teacher.

— Claire

Lilly took great care in walking us through the key principles that inform yoga teachers working with traumatized populations, first leading us through a trauma-informed sequence, which really helped to ground the theory in practice. She was also extremely generous with her time and self, in answering all of our questions about trauma yoga and about her individual journey. I can absolutely say it inspired me on a personal level to further explore the path of trauma-sensitive yoga. Our small group of yoga teachers agree—to a person—that Lilly's workshop was one of the most impactful in our whole training.

 — Steven 

Lilly has a deep well of knowledge and experience in Trauma Sensitive Yoga. Her offerings have been a tremendous asset to our 200 hr teacher training program. She is skilled at guiding people into a more settled place within themselves -people who come to the mat for the very first time as well as those who have extensive yoga experience. Her classes strike at the heart of yoga—that everything is as it should be and allowing people permission to experience the present moment.”

  — Jennifer