Not every yoga space is for everyone--yet yoga is for everyone. When you find yours, it’ll feel like home.

Ewan Duarte

Director's Statement

There is still so much more education, awareness, and diversity that needs to be represented and seen through mainstream media about Queer and Trans lives. I’m passionate about continuing to create “conscious media” that focuses on authentic representations of Queer and Trans living from empowered and integrated perspectives. As a Queer/Trans filmmaker, I’m all too aware of who is telling our stories. It is so vital for Queer and Trans artists, writers, and filmmakers to be the one’s sharing our own lives and experiences from perspectives that aren’t sensationalized, objectified, or purely for profit.

As a Queer/Trans filmmaker who is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about Queer/Trans cinema and history, there currently isn’t a documentary in existence that represents Trans and/or Queer identified yoga teachers exploring the intersection of yoga and these identities. Queering Yoga is an intimate portrait about the Queer/Trans yoga movement.

It is so important for empowered and integrated Queer and Trans lives to be represented in media. It’s time to take our stories into our own hands and hearts and make media about them. Queering Yoga will continue the conversation about Queer and Trans people from an empowered perspective. Queering Yoga explores the intersection of yoga and identity with groundbreaking representation of diverse perspectives from Queer/Trans yoga teachers, made by Queer/Trans filmmakers!

The ancient, Indian origins of yoga are honored and appreciated by the filmmakers and participants of Queering Yoga. Queering Yoga is the continuation of that ancient practice into the hearts and lives of Queer, Trans, Allies, and POC living in the Western world.

As a white (Eastern European Jew, a quarter Mexican, and a quarter German), Queer/Trans individual living in the U.S., I have questioned my purpose in the Queer yoga movement through my own meditations; I've confided in trusted healers, and I offer my intention for this project: To serve in the highest interest of all.

Participants

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Roshan Sukumar

Roshan Sukumar began his yogic journey with a few classes in high school and enjoyed the sporadic class in the years after that, but it was only after moving back home to his native San Francisco Bay Area after graduate school that he really committed himself to a serious practice.

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Jacoby Ballard

Jacoby Ballard, E-RYT 500, is a white working-class queer transperson who has been teaching yoga for 15 years and practicing western herbalism for 10 years.

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Skeeter Barker

Skeeter honours the peaceful warrior nature that is uniquely revealed in each of us, on this journey through the different shapes that yoga can take.

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Richelle Donigan

Richelle has studied and taught yoga in the Anusara style since 2003, when a major physical injury brought her to this practice. Over the years, she has studied with some of the most amazing Anusara instructors–Anusara founder John Friend, Katchie Ananda, and Jim and Ruth Bernhart.

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Deontré Martin

Meet Deontré Martin, yogi, writer, activist, and student of his queer Oakland/bay area community. Deontré is the founder of “i freaking love yoga”, a weekly, all-inclusive qtpoc-centered yoga gathering in West Oakland’s Lower Bottoms neighborhood.

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Ananda Mendoza

Ananda Mendoza was born in San Salvador, El Salvador in Central America. She’s been living in the Bay Area since 1991.

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Sterling Taylor

Sterling’s love affair with yoga began in the late 90’s when he attended his first power yoga class at his local gym in Monterey, CA.

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Chani Nicholas

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Dominic Jeffries

I, Dominic, am a queer trans man. I have been teaching yoga since August 2017. I was certified with Yoga to the People. That is where I teach regularly, but I teach occasionally at a few other places too.

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It’s not about trans bodies—it’s about trans people.

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