Meet Your Guide

Jen Elden

Jen is a Mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and lover of living an authentic life connected with nature in Northwest Montana.  She is a Licensed Massage Therapist, Registered Yoga Teacher, and Certified Facilitator of Mindful Grieving Yoga Therapy Programs. During the tumultuous time navigating Covid19 in the Spring of 2020, and feeling the depths of life’s challenges and recent loss, Jen participated in the Grief Support Network’s 6 Week Awakening Through Grief Yoga Therapy Program followed by a deep dive into their 200-hour Mindful Grieving Yoga Therapy Teacher Training. In addition to her holistic practice of Massage, Bodywork and Yoga with her business, Whitefish Massage Therapy, Jen now volunteers with GSN with their Virtual Community Circles and offers Mindful Grieving Yoga Therapy Programs and Community Circles through www.apanii.org.  

Why Apanii?

The symbolism of Butterfly as a metaphor for transformation feels potent for what we do as we move through life, as we lean into our grief and shadows, go into our internal experience and reemerge with anew. Drawing from past experience working on land use issues on sacred Tribal lands along the Rocky Mountain Front, Jen received formal permissions from Blackfeet spiritual leaders in a traditional ceremony to use the Indigenous Blackfeet word for Butterfly, Apanii, to be carried through her offering of grief work and beyond. With sweetgrass and ritual, prayers were sung in native tongue.  Opening, weeping, breathing into the profound power of the words, the vibration of the language, intention, and genuine acceptance, she received their gift. She accepted their invitation to deepen her intention and take a vow with Apanii at Circle Dance this summer of 2021, an experience that has forever imprinted her soul with its sacred intention and beauty.

Jen is deeply honored and humbled to bring this healing work forward, and in rippling out the vision of one her teachers, Wendy Stern, Founder of the Awakening through Grief Mindful Yoga Therapy Program, Grief Support Network and Center for Somatic Grieving, in changing the way our culture processes grief.  So many lessons are embedded through each piece of this practice, ultimately cultivating awareness so we can remember who we truly are, reconnecting to the light and unconditional love and union within each of us.  By doing so in community, we can restore our resilience, amplify our healing journey of self discovery, and live with love as our guide.