Founder, Instructor, and Keeper of Belonging

I was born and raised in Bakersfield in a family shaped by devotion and faith. As a young queer boy, I grew in ways that were not always understood. By seventeen, life had shifted in a way that asked me to find my own path far sooner than I expected. I learned how to care for myself in the absence of a place to land, carrying both the ache and the strength of that season into adulthood.

That longing for belonging became my teacher. It shaped how I listened, how I loved, and how I showed up for the people around me. I carried that devotion into every role I held, always giving, always offering, even when I did not yet know how to receive.

Yoga arrived in my life as an invitation back to myself. It was the first space where breath and truth could meet without fear. The mat became a place where I could soften, unravel, and begin to rebuild. Over time, a yoga community in downtown Bakersfield welcomed me with the warmth and acceptance I had spent years searching for. That community became my family. Their presence changed me.

Bhramari was born from that love. It is a home for the belonging I once needed and now get to help cultivate. A place where people can arrive as they are and feel seen without having to hide. A place where we breathe together, move together, and remember that healing happens in relationship.

Teaching yoga is where my heart feels most true. It is where I share the compassion, strength, and steadiness that were once offered to me when I needed them most. At Bhramari, my hope is simple. I want every person who walks through our doors to feel supported in their becoming, welcomed into community, and invited into something that feels like family.

This studio is more than a dream. It is a return. It is the family I once needed and now get to help create. It is the hum of a community finding its way back to one another.

Community Visionary and Healing Guide

I never expected to become a yoga teacher. For years my life was centered on psychology, trauma research, and training toward a PhD in clinical psychology. I cared deeply about healing, yet I felt the limits of a system that reduced people to symptoms instead of seeing them as whole. Leaving my doctoral program was an act of surrender and the beginning of a path guided by intuition, truth, and spiritual awakening.

I am a queer survivor of childhood sexual abuse. My early life taught me how to navigate pain in silence and how to search for safety in a world that often could not offer it. Over time, I learned that healing is not about erasing our past. It is about transforming it. My darkness became the place where I first recognized my light and where my purpose took shape. My work now is devoted to awakening, wholeness, and the possibility of collective liberation.

Yoga entered my life as a return to myself. Through therapy, inner work, and learning to trust my breath and body, I began to unravel the patterns that once protected me. I eventually traveled across India to study with teachers who revealed yoga as lineage, philosophy, and a way of living. Their teachings changed the way I move in the world and how I hold space for others.

My background in psychology helps me understand nervous systems, emotion, and the younger parts of us that still long to be held. My spiritual path helps me listen to what is unspoken and honor the unseen threads that guide us. Together these paths shape a way of teaching that is grounded, intuitive, and deeply human.

In my classes, I care less about how a pose looks and more about what it reveals. I want people to sense themselves, soften their defenses, and remember who they truly are. I hold space for people to arrive as they are and to know that healing is not meant to be done alone.

Bhramari is a continuation of this journey. It is something Kevin, Reema, and I are creating with our community, rooted in belonging, lineage, and the belief that we heal and awaken together. I am grateful for this hive we are building in Bakersfield and for every person who chooses to be part of it.

Creative Director

I am an artist, a naturalist, and a woman shaped by land, lineage, and community. My Palestinian heritage grounds me in a deep commitment to justice, belonging, and collective liberation. I carry my people with me everywhere I go, and I move through the world with a devotion to beauty, tenderness, and truth.

Nature has always been my teacher. I began my journey with the Tejon Ranch Conservancy in 2016, first as a docent and later as the Public Access and Education Manager. Guiding people on the land helped me understand the quiet wisdom of place and strengthened my love for landscape and nature photography. Photography became my way of listening. Of honoring the stories that live in the earth and sky.

What I bring to Bhramari comes from my heart. I believe in community as a practice. In creativity as a form of healing. In art as a way of remembering who we are. I am devoted to the people I love and to the community we are building here. I want this studio to feel like a home. A place where people can breathe, expand, and be held.

At Bhramari, I help shape our creative vision and capture the soul of our community through imagery, storytelling, and care. I see this work as a living offering. A way of uplifting our collective voice and tending to the beauty we create together.