About Tamara

My journey to yoga was a rough one. At first, I thought yoga was just for super-fit women who took those amazing pictures of complicated poses on Instagram. I couldn't sit cross-legged on the floor, let alone get myself into pretzel-like shapes. I was 6'2", over 500 pounds, and struggling with the worst fibromyalgia symptoms I had ever had to deal with. Doctors were giving up on me and I lived on painkillers to just function. To say the least, I was miserable and fairly hopeless about my future. I was encouraged to try yoga by a massage therapist, and eventually she badgered me into trying a private lesson with a local teacher.

I remember being absolutely terrified, forcing myself to get out of the car and walk into the building. One look at my teacher didn't solve my fears. She was exactly the same lithe, gorgeous shape that I saw in nearly every depiction of yoga. I started making assumptions about what we would be doing—and there was no way I could keep up with her. However, Kelly surprised me. Not only had she come armed with an armful of research about how yoga could help with fibromyalgia, but she customized our lessons easily and without any indication that this was anything but a true practice. My first year I stayed mostly in a chair or standing beside it during practice, and eventually would do one trip onto the floor. The next year, I did a little more floor work and could do different variations of poses. I remember Kelly's cheering when I finally, after months of working on it, got my body into my first downward dog pose. I was elated--but also scared because I couldn't figure out how to get down!

Fast forward several years, and I have learned a lot in so many ways. My body has changed, becoming stronger and healthier. I have much fewer “bad pain days” and have a variety of coping skills to get me through most of them without relying on opiates. My desire to understand my yoga practice more led me to a 200-hour yoga teacher training course, which challenged not only my own insecurities but my ingrained assumptions about what yoga was. I became passionate about learning as much as I could about adapting yoga to be accessible to people like me, and then sharing that through becoming a teacher. I want to reach the bigger people, the forgotten or left-out people, the ones with invisible illnesses who are desperate to find some way to survive. Those who are too intimidated to go to a yoga class. Those who fear that yoga could never be accessible to them—that yoga couldn’t come to meet them where they are, gently guiding them to helpful practices that can help them live healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives. My kind of people. I have pursued additional training in accessible yoga, diverse bodies yoga, meditation, and yoga nidra, and am currently working through a 300-hour training program that emphasizes trauma-informed yoga and even deeper work on accessibility and yoga nidra.

I truly believe that much of my functionality today is due to my work in yoga. I’m no longer an invalid and I’m able to enjoy more things in life. There are still bad days, but they don’t dominate my weeks and I can find ways to work through them instead of surrendering to the horror of intense pain. I take care of myself more, and I know it’s time for me to work even more in my community and online to share what I’ve learned and to work together with my students to find options for them. Options that bring better days, better coping mechanisms, a better understanding of our bodies and how to manage them. Yoga is for everybody, and every body. Come see how.