In my book, Demystifying American Yoga: Embodied Movement for Individual and Collective Transformation, I explore what it means to practice Queer Yoga—powerful, heart-led movement and breath rooted in visibility, healing, and resistance.

One of my greatest influences is Jacoby Ballard, author of A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation. Ballard writes, “Society is constantly telling queer and trans people that we shouldn’t exist, through overt and subversive forms of oppression.” That messaging doesn’t just live in the headlines—it settles into our bodies.
Even here in Bangor, where we’re held by a supportive community, we’re not untouched by the cultural forces that attempt to shrink or silence queer and trans expression. Queer Yoga offers something radically different: a space to come home to your body, your truth, and your joy.

What Is Queer Yoga, Really?
There’s no single definition--and that’s the point. Queer Yoga, as I teach it, is infused with my own lived experience: my identity, the symbols and stories that resonate with me, the femme power that grounds my movement.

Every Queer Yoga teacher brings their own fire, but at its heart, Queer Yoga is:

• A celebration of queer existence,
• A sanctuary for self-expression,
• A space where embodiment becomes activism.

It’s not about fitting in—it’s about showing up, fully and freely.

Why Trauma-Informed Yoga Matters
Ballard reminds us, “Trauma lives in the body, and through embodiment practices those stories can be unlocked.”

Queer, trans, and non-binary folks often carry layers of trauma—from rejection, from systemic harm, from the daily micro-injuries of living in a world that wasn't built for us. We don’t just need affirming ideas—we need embodied practices that help us shake loose what’s been held too long.

Movement is how we transmute pain into power. It’s how we break cycles of harm, not just in society, but within our own nervous systems.

Activism, art, and education are essential. But if we’re not healing the body? We’re leaving part of ourselves behind.

The Power of Queer Embodiment
As Ballard puts it, yoga connects us to “our growth, pain, and resilience.” It’s a spiral inward and outward—a path that helps us release shame, soften our shields, and reconnect with our human capacity to thrive.

Queer Yoga isn’t a performance. It’s a reclamation. Of gender. Of community. Of pleasure, rage, softness, strength. Of the full spectrum of who we are.

That’s what we practice at Spiral Studio.

Why Femme? Why Now?
My class weaves Ballard’s wisdom with a deep celebration of the femme side of the queer spectrum—because that’s where I’ve found my deepest healing. Through the work of building the Spiral Goddess Collective, I’ve learned to honor my softness, my fluidity, my intuitive knowing.

This practice is rooted in what author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore calls “the radical potential to choose one’s gender and one’s sexual and social identities... to create a culture on our terms.”

That’s the culture we’re creating at Spiral Studio. A space for authenticity. For courage. For coming home to yourself.

Pride at Spiral Studio
Join us in celebration, in movement, in community. This Pride season, we’re holding space for all the layers of what it means to be queer—grief and joy, rage and softness, pride and power.

🌀 Queer Yoga — May 22, 7:00–8:15 PM
A healing and affirming space for movement, stillness, expression, and connection.
🌀 Generations of Pride Dance & Fundraiser for Bangor Pride — May 31, 7:00–9:00 PM
Dance, release, and raise funds for queer joy and community power.
🌀 Bangor Pride Festival — June 29
Visit us at our Spiral Studio table or come to our studio space on the 4th floor of 16 State Street for a quiet, welcoming refuge.

Come as you are.
Move as you need.
Be held, seen, and celebrated.
This is Queer Yoga. This is Spiral Studio. This is liberation in motion.

Stepping into a new space and/or a new activity is scary, stepping into a new life—a new version of you—is seemingly impossible. Until it’s not.
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We are each on our own healing journey, and to heal—and thrive—we need to be with ourselves. But lasting, transformative healing is bolstered, supported, and sustained by, and in, community.

On my own journey, as an introvert, and from amidst a sea of shame and fear, the need to ask for help and the need to connect to a community felt impossible. It was difficult to face the truth that connections with other people are key to healing, let alone embrace this fact.

What I have learned about trauma and healing is that we have to move our bodies and learn practical tools for emotional regulation. And we need to participate in mind/body, somatic, embodied practices consistently—yoga and dance are the most impactful practices for me.

There is no magical pill or one and done miracles; there is only hard work. And it’s worth it.

While there are many approaches to healing, to movement, to embodiment—the practices that we offer at The Spiral Goddess Collective are thoughtfully designed and curated toward sustaining healing and transformation. Our community—and the classes and workshops that we offer—welcome each individual just as they are, providing tools and resources and a brave space for exploration.

​But you have to be willing to take that leap...

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I survived for decades using yoga and dance as a way to mitigate my trauma and attempt to stay sane, but it wasn’t until I started to better understand trauma and embodiment that I was able to actually start to heal and transform—to stop using these practices as a way to avoid myself and to use them as a way to connect to myself.

The way I practiced and taught dance and yoga transformed as well.

Talk therapy helped and daily yoga and dance practices helped, but JourneyDance was a game changer in so many ways. Training to be a JourneyDance facilitator was something that I did for myself, but now it is something that I am driven to share with others, especially those who don’t know that they need this kind of medicine or those who fear what embodiment might bring.

We need practices designed to help us ground, center, explore, and release.

We need a brave container and a supportive community—space and support.

And we need consistency. We need to return to the dance floor or the yoga mat (or, ideally, both!) over and over again. We return to ourselves again and again, finding love and compassion for ourselves.

And each time we do, we not only experience the benefits of these somatic, embodied practices, we also build resilience, access joy, flex our muscle memory, and create new pathways in our brains. We become mentally and physically stronger, more embodied, more self-regulated, and more able to respond rather than react to the stress in our lives and the chaos in our world.

The path toward healing and transformation is long and winding. There is no magical destination, but there is comfort and ease and a better quality of life.

So, if you are standing at the edge of the precipice—frozen and frazzled and fearful and insecure, numbing your senses (with alcohol or drugs or social media scrolling or shopping or whatever) because you don’t know what else to do (and because this is the norm of our culture)—maybe it’s time to take that leap. It feels impossible, but once we do, we find that it’s just what we didn’t know we were looking for.