Catherine Cook-Cottone, PhD, is recognized with this APA Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation for her advocacy and implementation of evidence-based mind-body practices throughout the Buffalo, New York community.
Cook-Cottone is the founder and president of Yogis in Service, Inc. (YIS), a non-profit organization whose mission is to create access to yoga and mindfulness to inner city schools, hospitals, universities, community centers and treatment centers in Western New York. This organization reaches thousands of participants annually through yoga classes, outreaches and community events — all free of charge. Sessions are held in community centers, churches, local schools, domestic violence shelters, refugee safe houses, the Pride Center of Western New York, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and at the Veteran Administration Medical Center in Buffalo. Representing YIS, Cook-Cottone has even taught yoga at the Annual White House Easter Egg Roll. One of her recommenders stated, "What makes Cook-Cottone's work impressive is her integration of what she learns as a scientist-practitioner, and applies to her work with the community in an effort to help individuals dealing with economic challenges, race-based trauma, and other life stresses, to find effective and meaningful tools to better their lives and enhance their families and their communities. In this day and age, given the challenges facing us as a country and world, I cannot imagine more important work."
Cook-Cottone has delivered an eating disorders program for school settings, based on her Attuned Representation Model of Self (ARMS), which uses yoga as a tool for embodied self-regulation. The Girls Growing in Wellness and Balance program is the first program to use yoga as one of the primary methods for promoting health and wellness among developing girls. It has been run in schools, yoga studios, after-school programs, and summer camps locally, nationally, and internationally. She has published six books including the book, Girls Growing in Wellness and Balance: Yoga and Life Skills to Empower (2013, Schoolhouse Educational Services), that details the program for professionals to deliver within their communities. Internationally, Cook-Cottone and her team created a trauma-informed curriculum for the Africa Yoga Project (founded and directed by Paige Elenson) which trains yoga teachers and offers access to yoga as a method for embodied self-regulation to communities across Africa. She also consults with the United Nations Foundation as part of a team that developed and delivers a mindfulness-based intervention to support well-being and decrease burnout among humanitarian workers world-wide.