Meet CPF Faculty: Renee Foster, LCSW

Renee Foster, MPH, LCSW, E-RYT 500, SEP is a long term Christina Phipps Foundation yoga teacher and faculty. She has presented at a few of our CPF trainings, most recently at the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine June 4, 2022. Her presentation, The Psychosocial Impact of Breast Cancer, is a popular addition to our training program. This presentation includes her experiences as an oncology social worker, palliative care social worker and oncology yoga teacher at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. She has also presented CEU classes for CPF Alumni, the most recent entitled Trauma Sensitive Strategies for CPF Yoga Teachers. She will present Somatics and Oncology Yoga to our teacher trainees on August 25, 2024.

Renee has extensive experience in community development, public health education, crisis intervention, clinical counseling, and various mind-body interventions. She holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Massachusetts and a Master of Social Work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Early in her career, she worked as a director for several community public health initiatives before shifting her focus to work with individuals and families as a hospice bereavement counselor where she developed a specific protocol for working with children. She went on to gain further experience as a social worker in the areas of intensive care and outpatient oncology.

Renee is currently part of the Palliative Care team at Mayo Clinic, where she provides clinical counseling and grief support to palliative care patients and their families using psychotherapeutic and mind-body interventions. She has a particular interest in helping people find meaning and spiritual well-being as they navigate through end-stage and chronic illnesses. Her areas of specialty include Somatic Experiencing, Meaning Centered Psychotherapy, Accelerated Resolution Therapy, Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy, and Compassionate Inquiry. Renee enjoys tailoring her interventions to include elements of yoga, meditation, music, laughter yoga, yoga dance, and other movement modalities. She has presented at various annual conferences and community cancer organizations to promote education about the benefits of yoga and other somatic interventions in cancer recovery and healing.