GINA DE LA CHESNAYE
Teacher
Gina de la Chesnaye is the founder and director of The Nachan Project which provides mindfulness based practices for trauma and resiliency, humanitarian aid, psycho-social support and public health advocacy to the Karimojong women and children of the Katwe slums in Kampala, Uganda. She also offers Mindfulness and Trauma Management Trainings to social workers, trauma therapists, medical doctors and humanitarian aid workers throughout East Africa and the United States.
Gina worked for over a decade with Lineage, bringing mindfulness based practices to youth in residential incarceration sites, detention centers, homeless shelters and suspension schools for more than a decade. She is also the Mindfulness Course Director for the Surgical PA Residency Program at Yale Medical School / Norwalk Hospital and a core faculty member of Second Response which tends to the emotional & psychological needs of people exposed to trauma, providing body-centered methods to relieve the harmful effects of stress, distress & trauma. Gina teaches a weekly on-line meditation class through Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science .
She has been a martial artist specializing in San Da, Muay Thai, K1 kickboxing and Western Boxing for more than 20 years and has taught meditation, yoga and Qi Gong to communities across the globe both in person and on-line.
Gina is an alumna of the Harvard Global Mental Health Trauma & Recovery Certificate Program and holds a Master of Global Public Health degree from NYU. She has an MFA in Photography from Hunter College and has exhibited her work globally. She is a writer and photographer and has written numerous articles on yoga, meditation, martial arts and Buddhism as well as produced multiple series documenting the lives of the Sherpa and migrant communities in Nepal as well the slum communities in Uganda. She is currently shooting a documentary on the experiences of the Karimojong in Uganda.
Gina can be reached at: gdelachesnaye@gmail.com