Who we are
Here at Healing Roots we believe that every person deserves access to healing, resilience, and self-empowerment. Our work focuses on bringing trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness practices to communities that are too often overlooked and under-resourced.
Yoga offers more than movement - it’s a science-backed tool for calming the nervous system, building resilience, and reclaiming agency over one’s body. For many, it can be the first safe space to breathe again.
Founded by former UCLA gymnast Matteah Brow, Healing Roots was born from her own journey of healing after injuries and burnout left her searching for a new way to connect with her body and mind. Yoga provided that path — offering not just physical relief, but also resilience, grounding, and self-compassion.
Our mission is to share these same tools with communities who need them most - survivors of trauma, individuals in recovery, those impacted by incarceration, and other underserved communities. Through free and donation-based classes, Healing Roots works to plant seeds of healing and empowerment - helping people reconnect with their strength, their bodies, and themselves.
Meet our Founder
Hello friends - I’m so happy you’re here! My name is Matteah Brow, and I’m the founder of Healing Roots Initiative. Yoga has played such a meaningful role in my life, and I’ve seen firsthand how deeply it can impact others. Yet access to yoga is still limited for many people due to cost, environment, and lack of exposure.
I started this nonprofit to help change that by bringing accessible, inclusive yoga directly into communities that can benefit from its incredible ability to heal, ground, and empower. We often forget the strength we carry in our own minds and bodies — and my hope is to help people reconnect to that power and begin to heal from the roots up.
I spent most of my life as an elite gymnast, up through university as a member of the UCLA Gymnastics team. I had to medically retire my freshman year after years of training had left me with chronic back and hip injuries that made it unsafe to continue. In my retirement journey I struggled to find any form of movement that didn’t make things worse - until I found yoga. It was the first practice that eased my pain instead of triggering it.
But the shifts went far beyond the physical. Yoga helped me release and heal the unhealthy mindset I had developed in gymnastics around perfection, pushing through pain, and always proving myself. It gave me space to breathe, to listen to my body instead of fighting it, and to rebuild a relationship with myself rooted in compassion rather than criticism. Over time, my anxiety softened, my self-love grew, and I began to feel at home in my own body again. Yoga brought out a whole new person inside of me that I didn’t know existed.
I truly believe the world would be a better place if everyone practiced yoga daily. While I can’t make that happen single-handedly, I can do my part: bringing yoga to people who might otherwise never have the chance to experience it. My mission is to create opportunities for healing and self-discovery - offering individuals a chance to reconnect with their mind, body, and soul in ways they may have never thought possible.
