DÉU ALMEIDA (she/her)
I’m Deusa (Deu) Almeida, a musician, doula trainer, public health practitioner, and social entrepreneur. As a lifelong artist and first generation Cabo Verdean American, my work explores the intersection of creativity, culture, and healing. My background in public health and social entrepreneurship has led me to build programs and spaces centered on more equitable, culturally responsive approaches to care and well-being. A few of these initiatives include Doulas of the Diaspora, where I am the founding Executive Director and Dayspace, where I am the founding Chief Officer of Community.
I was first introduced to yoga at age 13 through model and philanthropist Gisele Bündchen, who served as a mentor in a program I participated in through the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers. I still remember my first yoga class with her then yoga teacher, Amy Ippoliti: while the other tween and teen girls giggled their way through meditation, I found myself completely intrigued. After that summer, I didn’t practice consistently for a while, but yoga remained a tool I knew I could return to. When I faced depression at 16, I found my way back to the breathwork I had learned years earlier and began to understand just how powerful those practices could be.
In college, I started exploring yoga again, but it wasn’t until I moved to Atlanta in 2015 that it became a consistent part of my daily life and I’ve maintained a regular practice ever since. Over the years, yoga has been a steady pillar through many seasons of change— career transitions, pregnancy and motherhood, grief, relocation, health challenges, and everything in between. My relationship with yoga has evolved alongside me, but its role has remained remarkably consistent: it is a practice I can return to, again and again, to reconnect with my breath, my body, and myself.
Outside of my professional life, I’m the proud mama of three. Motherhood has profoundly shaped the way I understand the body -- not only as something that moves, but as something that carries memory, culture, strength, wisdom and transformation. For me, yoga is part of a much larger practice of living fully: staying connected to my body, honoring where I come from, and making room for both ambition and rest.
What To Expect From My Classes
As a musician, musicality is at the heart of how I experience and teach movement. I bring rhythm, sound, breath, and intentional sequencing together to create yoga practices that feel immersive and expressive, inviting students to connect with the rhythm of their own bodies. You can expect a flow that encourages bodily exploration and creative expression. Having personally experienced the many ways the core can change through pregnancy, surgery, and other life transitions, I love incorporating gentle, functional core support that honors the body while building strength, stability, and connection.