Meet Jósa Goodlife

Jósa Goodlife (she/her) is a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher, sound healer, and elemental storyteller who facilitates embodiment and sound journeys at Contrast, bringing two decades of somatic and spiritual practice to San Francisco's sauna and cold plunge community.

Born and raised in Iceland, Jósa's work is rooted in the elemental wisdom of her Nordic homeland — water, fire, air, and earth are not metaphors to her but living teachers. She has spent over twenty years studying trauma-informed yoga, sound healing, and spiritual mentorship, and since settling in the Bay Area in 2021, has taught at Alameda's Breathing Room studio, where she blends slow flow, hatha, yin, and restorative practices into a signature somatic style built for deep inquiry rather than performance.

Her path deepened through loss and reckoning. In her early thirties, Jósa faced cancer and a hysterectomy — an experience that stripped away certainty and, in its place, left her with an unflinching devotion to life as gift rather than given. In 2025 she published Elemental Rebirth, a poetic healing memoir written through the lens of the four elements, guiding readers through grief toward transformation. That same elemental framework now lives in her Contrast sessions.

At Contrast, Jósa holds space through her Elemental SoundBaths — immersive sound journeys that move participants through water, fire, air, and earth, paired with the practice's guided heat and cold rituals. Her sessions have been featured at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle and at Icelandic heritage events across North America, and she brings that same reverence for ritual and lineage into every room she facilitates, whether she's guiding a first-timer through their first plunge or holding space for someone mid-grief.

When she isn't facilitating in San Francisco, Jósa is often back in Iceland, tending to the landscape and community that shaped her, or building the next retreat that braids movement, creative play, and sound. For her, healing was never about returning to who she was before — it's about becoming someone new in relationship with the elements. That's the invitation she extends to everyone who steps into a Contrast session with her.