Yoga with Tamara

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		Whether returning to Yoga or beginning your practice, this gentle and therapeutic class offers an accessible and fun Sangha for nourishing your mind, body and spirit. Join us for a gentle Yoga practice that combines Asana, Pranayama, and Mindfulness. As we cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder in our yoga practice, habits and patterns are revealed providing insight to the causes of suffering. Through this exploration new possibilities are available to us.
	Tamara Danielle Perkins, CYT
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Tamara is a Raja Yoga teacher, and founder and director of a non-profit (Niroga) and a film production company (Apple of Discord), as well as, community activist. Inspiration for Tamara's latest ventures stem from her deep interest in cultural and religious studies, including an affinity for Eastern philosophy and practice resulting from childhood exposure to Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism through her father. She has made Yoga, meditation, and Buddhist principals an integral part of her life. Another great influence is her friend and Vippasana meditation teacher since 1999, Shaila Catherine (www.imsb.org).

Inspired by personal loss she began volunteering in 2001 as a children's group facilitator at Kara, a Palo Alto-based grief support center. Having lost a loved one to suicide, she was amazed and heartened to learn of the services Kara provides for survivors of suicide. Tamara joined Kara as a volunteer coordinator in 2001 and has worked with their ‘Complicated Grief’ program ever since. She has also helped start and facilitate ongoing survivors of suicide groups. Through Kara she first began offering Yoga to people with special needs.

Tamara is co-founder and former program director of the Niroga Institute, a non-profit Center for Integral Health and Development dedicated to providing life skills to at-risk and underserved individuals and families through Yoga. Niroga is reaching out to several hundred people a week, including homeless, delinquent and incarcerated youth, people in rehab and recovery, and seniors.

First brought into San Quentin in 2006 to provide Yoga by the Alameda County Public Health Department, Tamara has continued the San Quentin Trust Yoga program along with the help of her friend and teacher Katchie Ananda (Yoga Sangha). She is also teaching at Dublin Women's Federal Correctional Institute.

Combining creativity, service and activism, Tamara started a film production company called Apple of Discord Productions. She has produced Yoga instructional DVDs, feature shorts, and is currently working on a community development documentary focused on the San Quentin Trust, a group of inmates working to inspire change within themselves, their families, and their communities. Trust Community explore the opportunity to transform liabilities into assets and the public and private agencies and organizations mobilizing to encourage and support this transformation.

Tamara has a diverse professional background, spanning several industries from banking to telecommunications, ending her commercial business career in high-tech before devoting herself to social service-based pursuits. Her portfolio includes global marketing management within the software industry, focused on the Asia Pacific region. She earned her B.S. from Indiana University, with a major in International Marketing and a minor in French.