Meet The Team

Carla Tantillo, M.A., C.Y.I, Founder

Before founding Mindful Practices, Carla Tantillo started her educational career as an elementary and high school teacher, after which she took on the role of Curriculum Director for the Little Village contract school she helped to create in the fall of 2003. Noticing a significant correlation between student levels of stress and their academic achievement, Carla began Mindful Practices in 2006. Mindful Practices is an organization dedicated to putting wellness in the hands of students and teachers from all walks of life.

"Mindful Practices' programs help us promote healthier lifestyles amongst our students who each day must overcome great obstacles just to survive. Carla’s program provides students with an outlet for expelling their negative energy. Through embedded professional development and structured, practitioner-led sessions, teachers and students learn the practice of yoga as a means to emotional serenity."
Jennie, 4th Grade Teacher

Since its inception in 2006, Carla has utilized her professional teaching, administrative, and university experience to cultivate Mindful Practices to serve diverse learning communities from visually impaired adults to students with special needs.

Carla has a Masters Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Saint Xavier University in Chicago. Additionally, she received her yoga teacher certification from the Temple of Kriya Yoga in Chicago and is the co-creator of Hip-HopYoga©.

“Many schools are looking for effective ways to teach students how to channel their anger and maintain focus in class. Carla was willing to work with three of our far South Side schools to develop tailored yoga curricula to address both of those concerns. Principals and teachers at these schools were looking for novel and effective ways to engage students and keep them on task. Carla’s yoga program has already begun to do just that.”
Bart, School and Community Liaison

"If there are two things I would like people to take away from my program, they would simply be that relaxed students learn better and relaxed teachers teach better."

Carla currently lives in Chicago and has a Yellow Lab named Hunter.

Bianca Dassinger, M.A., L.S.W., Director of Programs

Bianca Judenhahn Dassinger, a native of Germany, earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany and her M.A. in Social Work from the University of Chicago with a concentration in school social work (type 73 certification) and family support practice.

Bianca has worked with children since she taught her first dance lesson over 20 years ago in East Germany. Since then, she worked as a camp counselor with special needs children for the Department of Children and Family Services in Würzburg, Germany; at a family support center in a Western Suburb of Chicago; as a school social worker in Chicago Public Schools; and as a social worker in Chicago’s Humboldt-Park neighborhood creating and implementing a Health Awareness program within a community school.

Bianca has been practicing yoga for over 15 years and has been closely connected to Mindful Practices since its foundation. Meeting Carla at a yoga class, she immediately saw the tremendous positive impact a yoga program would have on students and their ability to deal with everyday stressors and anxieties in their lives. While she has been incorporating breath work, imagery, and relaxation tools in her social work practice, Bianca is very excited about working with Mindful Practices to create and bring Yoga Wellness to children and schools on a broader base. She strongly believes that “children must be well in order to do well”.

Erin Crowley, M.A.T., C.Y.I., Director of Education

Erin earned her Masters of Arts in Teaching from Tufts University in 2003 and her yoga certification in 2001. She has been teaching yoga, theatre, movement, and writing to youth for 13 years in the public and private schools of Chicago, Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Her love of invention and creative movement landed her at summer camps in New Hampshire and Colorado, teaching yoga and theatre performance to young people and touring original youth theatre productions along the New England Coast. Erin has 10 years experience teaching yoga to adults and serves as the resident youth yoga teacher for Our Common Threads, a Chicago-based nonprofit. She continues to study yoga with her mentor, Gabriel Halpern, at the Yoga Circle in Chicago and find infinite inspiration from the spirited practice of her Mindful Practices students at Blaine Elementary School.