mika gainer

mika gainer is a meditation coach, liberation designer, and cosmic somatician re-imagining the scientia behind stories and interpersonal relationships. She works with the principles of design thinking and coaching to create human-centered, grounded experiences of learning and interaction. 

Her background in a collection of industries gives her a process-oriented lens in which to view how messages are received. The often hierarchical nature of messages in leadership influences her quest to communicate interconnectedness, simplicity, and ease as a gateway to a more collaborative worldview of equity, dignity and transparency. She is thus no stranger to opening space for authentic and hard conversations as seeds to transformation. 

mika has a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Marketing Communications and is a Certified Meta Digital Marketing Associate, and 500hr trained yoga and meditation teacher. Her educational history includes certification in inner leadership and mindfulness, peer support facilitation, embodied coaching, DEI, herbalism, tantric meditation, flower essences, and tarot guidance. She has found a thread of alchemy within self-discovery supported by eco-practices that activate creative problem solving, intuitive healing and conscious community building. 

What drives her is the everchanging need to unfold practical applications of the knowledge, tools, and activities available to all humans to create a more just world wherever we might spend most of our time in the process of working - in an office, in a yoga studio, on a farm or garden, at home, at school, at church, on social media, or in the streets. She provides dynamic individual or group coaching, organizational solutions, and creative meditation classes for reworking uncertainty and piecing together broken experiences for a more just, sustainable future.

mika@somapraxis.studio

https://www.somapraxis.studio

Tyler Houghton

Tyler aligns with grassroots communities, coalitions, and abolitionists to uplift all sentient beings generationally erasured, targeted, or otherwise confined to inhumane cages due to efforts of white supremacy and the settler-colonial system. As a multi-racial, urban Indigenous Blackfoot person, a non-gender conforming USMC veteran: Tyler’s intersectional social location drives their social justice activism, as well as their advocacy for a green-future, prioritizing ending racism and war. Tyler coaches trauma-informed and ‘survivance’ narratives. Focused on nonviolent direct action, decolonizing spirituality, dismantle racism, and reflective movement meditation: Tyler is grounded in compassionate and loving cross-cultural communication and protocol. Currently based in Portland Oregon, connect with Tyler at via Patreon, Facebook, and Instagram.

Vernita Pearl Fort

Vernita is an evolutionary systems ecologist, an economist, and a Research Scholar in two centers of the University of Illinois Global Institute, Urbana-Champaign. She is a Board Director with the Center for United Nations Constitutional Research based in Brussels who also served as a delegate to the 2021 UN Climate Conference of Parties in Scotland. For 25 years, she worked as a US career diplomat in 40 countries across Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. With a background in dance and performance pedagogy, Vernita is also a licensed yoga teacher. She engages this tradition’s philosophy and many world philosophies, as she centers justice and regenerative global democracy. In yoga, she also advances the healthy anatomical organization and movement of the human body. Yoga means “to yoke” and “to unite.” Vernita works to yoke and integrate her skills and experiences in ways that support individuals and communities to transform their personal, local, and global systems, into ones that ensure human thriving and agency for everyone everywhere, and to do so within the earth’s ecological capacity.

Vernita’s research shows how our systems of cultural political-economy and our systems of consciousness, undergird today’s interlocking crises of: 1) poverty, inequality, and survival migration; 2) hierarchies of dominance including systemic racism; 3) climate, ecology, and pandemic emergencies; and 4) violence, war, and nuclear threat. But she also shows how we have accumulated unprecedented knowledge and tools for changing these systems. As a Black woman working across diverse fields, Vernita supports individuals, communities, nations, and global and local (glocal) institutions in “change-making,” wherein participants: 1) Assess the entwined systems we inhabit; 2) Envision preferred futures; 3) Define goals consistent with the collective good; and 4) Design and take concrete actions that deliver healing, human flourishing, participatory democracy, and life-sustaining justice. With compassion, Vernita offers this support through teaching, facilitation, public speaking, performative pedagogy, writing, and research. Her research on Regenerative Global Democracy and the Africana World names today’s critical juncture, and the transformative shifts it insists we create, “The Peoples’ Great Turning.” Learn more and connect with Vernita here.

Laura Henderson

Introduction to yoga as a philosophical framework and approach to life in college opened Laura to a continuous journey of exploration, self-discovery, digging deeper and opening up within the inner and outer worlds. Laura’s favorite way of understanding yoga is that which makes the invisible, visible and the impossible, possible. Laura moves through the world with a deep commitment to connection, and to developing the courage and skills to continually turn toward compassion and curiosity - which admittedly requires perpetual practice and re-commitment to becoming aware of and interrupting deeply grooved patterns and conditioning. Laura currently serves as program manager and lead facilitator for Indy Equity Collaborative and is on the facilitation team for Interrupting Racism for Children in Indianapolis. For several years, Laura worked in partnership with five Indianapolis-area school districts, building and supporting a network of edible school gardens across 50 public schools. Laura is the founder and former executive director of Growing Places Indy, where Laura developed and implemented mind-body education programming for children, families and adults for over 10 years. Through a combination of gardening, food prep and yoga, GPI facilitates opportunities for individuals, families and community groups to explore mindful awareness and somatic awareness as skills for cultivating the conditions for individual and collective wellness, conscious activism and social justice. Laura serves on Indianapolis Public Schools’ Superintendent Advisory Council. Laura has been teaching yoga, Pilates and other mind-body modalities for more than 20 years. In addition to teaching in Indianapolis, Laura has lived and taught in Oslo, Norway, Tampere, Finland and Averio, Portugal. Laura is supported, challenged and inspired on the daily by a spouse of two decades and their vibrant young child.

Tanisha Hubbard

Tanisha, or Tan (they/she), is a caregiver, movement instructor, facilitator and aspiring activist. While the physical practice of yoga is what drew them to the mat, it was the calling of something deeper that led to the decision to complete a YTT. The introduction of the 8-limbed path during training was the starting point of their curiosity of the intersection of yoga and social justice. Forever a student of the practice, Tan is always eagerly seeking out spaces where crucial conversations around accessible wellness and movement are being held. This includes completing workshops and trainings for Yoga For 12-Step Recovery, Accessible Yoga, and Skill in Action. In the summer of 2021, they wrote their first published blog post for Accessible Yoga Blog on caregiving and how it relates to Yoga as a practice. They believe in empowering others to disrupt the narratives and stories that uplift perfectionism and hyper-productivity.

In movement classes, expect practices that encourage individual healing, as self love and care is a part of collective liberation.

Raudhah Rahman

Raudhah Rahman (dia/she/her) is Southeast Asian person with Bugis, Java, Orange Laut, Malay and Thai lineage. I am a web designer who unpacks branding through an anti-oppression lens. My work and practice is primarily informed through the Taoist philosophy of Yin and Yang as well as the South Asian lineage of Yoga.

Raudhah has spent several years in the research of Pranayama witnessing Science catching up to the already known benefits of breath regulation on our nervous system. In 2015, Raudhah graduated from Corepower Yoga’s 200hr Teacher Training program and completed her 300hr Teacher Training Program with Adam Whiting Yoga. Since then, Raudhah has taken several trainings and been mentored by Michelle Johnson as a Skill in Action facilitator.

Raudhah is currently based in Charlotte, NC on Catawba, Sugeree and Waxhaw land. She also spends a couple of months a year with her family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore. 

Shakira Be

Shakira Be - Shakira (she/her) was born in the mountains of Colorado, but her roots run wide in the South. For her, North Carolina is home, where she integrates the timeless wisdom of her ancestors, nature, and the practices of Yoga and Usui Reiki Ryoho.

With over a decade of experience as a licensed massage and bodywork therapist, her deep commitment to embodied living has evolved over time, shaping her brand Rhythmic Bloom. She guides others on a journey of spiritual and personal development, helping them discover resonance in loving honesty, cultivate a mindful rhythm of living, and experience transformative movement.

Shakira is committed to fostering connections and partnering with community organizations that share her vision to provide accessible spaces that nourish the soul. You can learn more about her at www.rhythmicbloom.com.

Garrett Jurss

Garrett (he/they) is a yoga and meditation guide living on the land of the Cherokee, Catawba, and Miccosukee people colonized as Greenville, SC. He believes that yoga is a practice of liberation, and he seeks to create spaces for people to slow down, invite in curiosity, and explore new possibilities. Garrett is committed to sharing practices that help people care for themselves and their communities because he believes that everything is interconnected. We’re stronger together, and yoga can teach us how to work collectively to disrupt and dismantle the systems of power and oppression that prevent all of us from thriving and being well. You can connect with Garrett on Instagram @garrettjurss or at garrettjurss.com.

LiAnn Ishizuka

LiAnn Ishizuka (she/her) is a lifelong learner, yoga teacher, design program manager and advocate for her Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. She believes yoga can be a powerful moving meditation and is committed to educating herself on what it means to be a “yogi” in this world on and off the matt, focused on the intersection of social justice and well being. 

LiAnn began practicing yoga in 2016 as a counter stretch to cardio workouts from marathon training, and in 2019 made the decision to deeper her practice to become a certified RYT® 200 hour yoga teacher. In 2020, LiAnn completed a Mind-Body Wellness & Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Training through Breathe for Change. LiAnn has taken several trainings from Michelle C. Johnson learning facilitation tools and techniques in a curriculum focused on anti-racism and social justice. She participates and practices regularly at The Tree Yoga Cooperative, a BIPOC-owned Yoga School & Wellness Hub. LiAnn currently resides on the traditional homelands of the Tongva peoples, now known as Los Angeles, CA.