On A Queer Dharma

This event was streamed live online with an interactive Q&A. This event will be recorded and will be available to watch on our YouTube channel and portions of the audio will be released on our podcast.

Through his work and writing, author, social justice educator, and yoga teacher Jacoby Ballard explores the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Jacoby examines and deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga can also become entangled in perpetuating the systemic oppression of queer communities and individuals. He also suggests an antidote—an empowering and affirming path to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks. 
 
Jacoby’s work and writing addresses the trauma—complex, vicarious, historical, and collective—perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he provides tools for self-compassion, practicing Tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding.  
 
Through his personal practice, yoga teaching and writing, Jacoby offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. In his latest book, A Queer Dharma, Jacoby shares stories from his personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and in his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class. 

Join queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker for a conversation with Jacoby about reclamation and the possibilities for finding an unapologetically queer path towards true healing and transformation.

Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher who leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 20 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and runs the Resonance mentorship program for certified yoga teachers to find their niche and calling. In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience and received Yoga Journal's Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, nonprofit and business offices, a maximum-security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. He lives with his partner, child, and innumerable plant friends on unceded Goshute, Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone land, now known as Salt Lake City, Utah. More at jacobyballard.net. 

Nick Walker is a queer, transgender, flamingly autistic author and educator whose work explores the edges and intersections of somatic psychology, queer theory, neurodiversity, and creative transformation. Dr. Walker is a core faculty member in the Somatic Psychology and undergrad Psychology programs at CIIS, a lifelong zen practitioner, senior aikido instructor at the Aiki Arts Center in Berkeley, and co-creator of the Weird Luck webcomic. Her writings can be found at neuroqueer.com.

We are grateful to our Bookstore Partner:

Marcus Books is the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore celebrating its 60th year. Marcus Books’ mission is to provide opportunities for Black folks and their allies to celebrate and learn about Black people everywhere.