Heather Stang is a thanatologist, mindfulness speaker, and author of the grief book Mindfulness & Grief: With Guided Meditations To Calm Your Mind & Restore Your Spirit. She is best known for using present moment awareness to relieve suffering, cope with and eventually reengage with life after loss. Her focus on teaching others to use mindfulness-based techniques to reduce stress, cope with grief, and cultivate personal growth is inspired by her own journey of love, loss and posttraumatic growth.Heather discovered yoga and mindfulness while she was the CEO of a web development company and diagnosed with a stress-related illness. These contemplative practices inspired Heather to live a life in service to others, and she became a suicide/crisis hotline call specialist in honor of her uncle who died by suicide when she was a child.She relied on her mindfulness training to maintain a calm and compassionate attitude both on the job and at home after difficult shifts. Additionally, Heather volunteered as a trainer and call specialist on the New Orleans hotline just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, and was a research assistant for a NIMH funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Research Project. This experience inspired her to pursue a Masters in Thanatology (Death, Dying & Bereavement Expert) from Hood College, which she earned in 2010.Struck by the parallels between mindfulness, yoga, and contemporary theories of grief, which focuses on the individual’s direct experience of loss and the benefits of meaning making and posttraumatic growth, Heather developed a “Yoga for Grief” course: an 8-week program uniting yoga, meditation, journaling, expressive arts and death education. Today, that course is captured in her book, Mindfulness & Grief, and is offered by yoga, meditation, and grief professionals in North America in a variety of venues.Heather is a public and keynote speaker, presenting for organizations such as the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (for military families), Association of Death Education and Counseling, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the National Fallen Firefighter’s Foundation, and the Maryland Library Association. In addition to Mindfulness & Grief, she contributed three chapters to the volume Techniques of Grief Therapy: Assessment & Intervention (Neimeyer, 2015).Heather lives on South Mountain overlooking Maryland’s Middletown valley with her husband, and is the founder of the Frederick Meditation Center where she is a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapist and mindfulness meditation instructor.Learn more at heatherstang.com and mindfulnessandgrief.com.

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