Equity & Accessibility
Updated August 26th, 2025
I move through the world as a white, queer, transgender anti-Zionist Jewish person. I am a little person living with scoliosis and chronic pain. I am also middle class, a U.S. citizen, a homeowner, debt-free, and English is my first language.
Because of systems of oppression and harm—namely, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, and the dominant cultural norms that stem from them—informing racism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, and more, along with my own intersecting identities, I am both learning practices of dismantling these systems and embodying that work in my own lived experience.
As part of my values and ethics, I am dedicated to studying with teachers, educators, facilitators, and activists who offer their own lived experiences to inform my understanding of what is required for us to dismantle systems of hierarchy and harm and achieve collective liberation. I consider myself part of a lineage of radical QTBIPOC and disabled thinkers and leaders, all of whom I name and honor regularly in my work. I believe that none of us function in isolation and I aim to emphasize collective care and accountability along with the truth that we cannot guarantee safety for any individual. These tenets, among many others, are reflected in the Community Agreements I practice in my offerings (detailed below).
I update the list of trainings, workshops, and certifications on my About page to reflect my ongoing commitment to these studies and practices.
Land Acknowledgement
I live and work on the stolen lands of the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Cowlitz, and Clackamas peoples; of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians—land known colonially as Portland, OR. I recognize that acknowledgments alone can be performative, so I commit to taking action to repair the ongoing and present harm caused by settler colonialism. I recognize that I am one person, and that I directly benefit from the forced removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples.
Currently, my honoring and action looks like paying money directly to Native populations and organizations, learning about the landscape of language and requests/needs as they continue to grow and evolve, and engaging in conversation and direct action with friends, family, and community when possible.
For more information on Native lands, I recommend beginning with this website as an initial resource, and for more information on moving from land acknowledgments to #LandBack, I want to uplift emi aguilar of @indigenizingartsed who regularly educates on this work.
Financial Access
I offer three-tiered and sliding-scale pricing, payment plans, and scholarships, and I am always open to conversation around cost. My goal is to balance sustainability for myself with accessibility for my communities. Each year, I also contribute to QTBIPOC-led organizations. Past orgs include: the Trans Justice Funding Project, the Native Justice Coalition, the National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland, OR, the Embodiment Institute, the Intersex Justice Project, and many more.
Disability Access
Accessibility is ongoing work. I currently ensure Zoom captions, podcast transcripts, and recordings of workshops. On social media, I caption videos, use image descriptions and alt text, and practice accessible design. I welcome feedback on additional needs as they arise.
Yoga
Over two decades of study, I have invested in yoga trainings, immersions, and retreats. As a white practitioner without lineage ties, I do not call myself a yoga teacher. Instead, I focus on honoring South Asian, Indian, and Desi lineages through my continued learning, financial contributions, and relationships with teachers from these communities.
Accountability
Accountability is a form of community care. I welcome critique and feedback, and I strive to meet these conversations with curiosity rather than defensiveness. As someone with privilege, it is my responsibility to tend to my own trauma and nervous system so that I can receive feedback without placing the burden of my fragility on others.
Community Agreements
In almost every space I facilitate, I begin by inviting participants to practice a set of community agreements, which can also be described as “community care practices.” These agreements often evolve with each group, depending on individual and/or collective needs. The agreements I typically use as a starting point are borrowed from and inspired by the work of Michelle Cassandra Johnson—a mentor, teacher, colleague, and friend, along with her involvement in the organization dRworks. Over time, I’ve adapted these agreements based on learnings I’ve gleamed from and with other educators, including the Transgender Training Institute and Resolutions Northwest.
Speak your truth; ground in your own experience with I statements
Ask questions in the language you have
Listen to understand; listen with curiosity
Be willing to do things differently and experience discomfort
Confidentiality and consent
Move in, move out
Accept and embrace non-closure
Balance self and community care
Hold multiple truths - both/and
Safer space, not safe space
Mia Mingus
I don’t want us to just make things 'accessible,' I want us to build a political container that access can take place in and be grounded in. Access for the sake of access is not necessarily liberatory, but access for the sake of connection, justice, community, love and liberation is. We can use access as a tool to transform the broader conditions we live in, to transform the conditions that created that inaccessibility in the first place.
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