Amy Pancake is a dedicated movement therapist, yoga teacher, and founder of Chakra Kids Yoga, whose journey into somatic healing began over three decades ago during a transformative Vipassana retreat in Thailand. With a background in Continuum Movement, Applied Kinesiology, and Rhythmic Movement, Amy blends ancient wisdom with modern science to support people of all ages in reconnecting with their bodies, emotions, and natural rhythms. In this interview for Mystic Mag, she shares insights from her path—from silent meditation to embodied play—and how presence, breath, and fluid movement can awaken lasting healing.
How did your time at Wat Suan Mokkh monastery and training in Vipassana meditation shape your approach to yoga and movement therapy?
I first spent time at Wat Suan Mokkh in January 1992. I was a young, spiritually curious atheist who suffered from depression. I was looking for a spiritual path that would help me to better understand myself and the world. I had an innate sense that a path of understanding would help me to heal.
While traveling in Southeast Asia I had the opportunity to participate in a silent Vipassana meditation retreat in southern Thailand.
Learning about equanimity, presence, and breath was transformative. We learned there were ways to practice consciousness in order to eventually be free(r) of samsara (the endless circle of suffering). There was a yoga teacher in our group of retreatants who taught us yoga in silence before dawn each morning. For me, every moment was like the freshest spring water – I felt calm, alert, and full of wonder. Yoga and meditation practiced together is a very different experience than practicing one or the other, though they each contain elements of the other. The silence added almost a watery element to the experience. Time stretched, cravings came and went, mostly went – it was a joy to be alive and (more) awake.
Since then I have practiced and learned many things, and one of the ways I know that something is right for me is if it aligns with that feeling of being awake, alive, and not under the influence of words, or dogma. It is important for me to find ways to share movement and breath and healing that don’t entirely depend on speaking. My understanding of somatic movement therapy includes this element of felt experience, inner experience, and shared inner experience. I don’t want to instruct you, I want to show you something and then we’ll see if you also experience it in a meaningful way. Then we can use words to talk about what your experience of it is, and evolve our practice from there. The words are an expression of a lived experience, not an instruction or dogma of any kind.
What inspired you to integrate Continuum Movement and somatic education into your work with both adults and children?
We are living in a cultural moment of disembodiment. I think most people would agree that our obsession with computers and the computerized world has reached an extreme. Continuum is such a rich field of exploration. It is vast and individual and also peers deeply, inquiringly, into the most subtle sensations, exquisitely fine realms of mind/body intertwining and shared experience. Continuum has to do with how water moves in our bodies, in our surroundings, on the planet, and in the cosmos. When we explore developing our sensitivity and neurological refinement.
This enriches every area of life. If I am in an ongoing exploration of engaging and priming the fluid system, that support will show up in my mood, my movement, my sleep, my relationships, relationship with self, my perceptions and my creativity/work. To say it is beneficial is an understatement. It is transformative. Though I may not teach children explicitly about how water moves in our bodies and how it functions as the carrier of information to and between our cells, we use visualizations and animal movement or sounds from nature to access that connection. Kids have a higher percentage of water in their bodies, so it is natural and accessible for many of them to move in an ooze or a flow.
Can you share a bit about the philosophy and mission behind Chakra Kids Yoga and how it supports emotional and physical development in children?
My philosophy and mission with Chakra Kids Yoga is to provide movement sessions, classes, and camps which create the setting for exploring new movements, and also retracing the neural pathways of our developmental movements which underlie our brain and body development. These reflexive patterns are often the key to maturing the body/mind when some of the movements (reflexes) that are encoded in our dna and which trigger brain, sensory, and physical development are missed or have not been done enough to allow the brain and body to reach full maturity. I am getting dramatic results for clients in my private practice and classes, including neurodiverse clients and clients who’ve been told they cannot improve.
How do you adapt your movement therapy techniques to meet the unique needs of clients across such a wide age and ability spectrum?
Our bodies change as we go through the life cycle, but movement, and especially neuro movement, is directly accessible at any stage of life. Our nervous system is plastic while we are alive. By this, I mean that we can start exploring how the fluid body and the nervous system can mature, can refine, and even regenerate at any age. This is a life-supporting examination, beneficial at whatever age or state of health we find ourselves in.
In what ways have your studies in Applied Kinesiology and Rhythmic Movement enriched the way you support healing through yoga?
Rhythmic Movement Training is biologically fundamental, in that it opens entire areas of capability, coordination, emotional maturity and groundedness, all of which create a resilient foundation for living a healthy life and includes areas like applied kinesiology and yoga.
Applied Kinesiology, is a complete system promoting well-being throughout our lives – with YOGA asana, diet, intellectual stimulation, leading to high levels of health. It helps to have research-based information to pass along to clients. This establishes trust and, hopefully, allows clients to develop or maintain a habit of reading about health and staying open to new activities, therapies, and lifestyle adjustments.
