About Tara (they/she)

I am a yoga and movement teacher, facilitator, community educator, and writer. My yoga practice and teaching, racial justice facilitation, writing, and coaching are deeply informed by my identities - as a South Asian person, as a person of diaspora, as a person with Eastern European Jewish ancestry. As queer, genderfluid. As a survivor. As a settler on unceded territory and traditional village sites of a diverse array of indigenous tribes and bands in so called Portland, Oregon. These identities and experiences, among others, deeply inform my movement & work in the world. In this, I acknowledge and work to heal the ways I hold both oppressor and oppressed in my being and lineage.

I am honored to co-own and steward The Bhakti Yoga Movement Center, where I also teach yoga & movement classes and co-direct the SOMA School of Yoga and Somatics. I have extensive experience in managing programs in the fields of higher education, grant-making, government, healthcare, and housing. My deepest love and passion is writing - this currents through all of my work, both creative and systemic.

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I approach my work and life with the belief that power dynamics are embodied, that in order to disrupt these and rebuild a world that centers liberation and justice, we must feel their effects in our bodies - in the ways we relate to ourselves and others - and then use that embodied awareness to see and shift the oppressive systems that govern our world. I also believe that this embodied awareness is only possible when in deep relationship with the earth, and so I weave earth-based practices and awareness into all of my work.

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I hold a B.A. in Public Policy Analysis from Pomona College where I focused on deconstructing the concept of global development and transformative justice as an alternative to the current criminal legal system in the so-called United States. I also holds a 300hr Yoga Teacher Training Certification from the Bhakti Yoga Movement Center and many other yoga and movement continuing education certificates, including Advanced Hatha Yoga and Yoga Nidra training with Khushi Malhotra. I am also a graduate of the Brownswell Healing Coaching Program with Kirin Bhatti and former Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Art for Ourselves, an online publication focused on QTBIPOC communities.

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