Get to Know
Zaria James
Zaria (she/her) is a lifelong student and a deeply devotional yoga practitioner. Zaria’s journey has led her through the fires of continual awakening, karmic healing, and a deep desire to ask big questions, gain wisdom, and pass what she finds along to others.
Zaria is a Yoga Teacher, Yoga Therapist, Comparative Mysticism Educator and DEI Facilitator. She has received advanced training in Yoga Philosophy, History, and Yogic Counseling, with connections to multiple lineages and streams. Zaria merges Yoga Therapy, Ayurvedic Medicine, and Vedic Astrology, informed by her background in social service delivery, community organizing, and non-profit work.
Zaria’s community work has been focused on serving folks with chronic mental health challenges, intellectual disabilities, LGBTQIA populations, as well as working and supporting incarcerated folks and those returning to the community post-incarceration.
Her academic background includes social justice, human rights, metaphysics, religious studies, and international sustainable development.
These days, Zaria is synthesizing this experience to offer yoga therapy, yoga nidra, and sound healing containers for grassroots visions for collective liberation.
May we bow to the lineage of realized beings from all the world’s guiding traditions, and may we live with Divine Love in our hearts as we honor The Living Divine in All Being, known by Many Names.
Care & Cultural Competence:
All these modalities I work with come from our One Source. However, there have been generations and generations of wisdom keepers, medicine stewards, sages, seers, and saints all lovingly preserving these traditions that are not of my blood lineage, but of my karmic and spiritual. In our current era under colonial capitalism, appropriation, commodification and consumerism have caused an immense amount of harm, diluted teachings, brought down the quality of trainings, and has created an ecosystem of theft rather than one of reciprocity. It is crucial that we understand traditions on their own terms, engage spirituality from a humanitarian and collective liberation lens and that we ensure we take care to increase our cultural competency and humility skills in order to honor the stewards of these streams while sharing Sacred Medicine with the Earth and creating new systems beyond those of violence, exploitation, and domination.
Credentials & Experience
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Trauma-Informed Yoga with Lisa Danylchuk
Certified with Trauma Recovery Yoga
Trauma-Informed Perspectives Certificate - University of Iowa
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In Progress
Specializing in Yoga of Recovery, Anxiety, Depression, and Complex Trauma, Cancer Care, Grief Relief, Chronic Pain, Psychedelic Preparation & Integration
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Foundations - 300 Hour - American Institute of Vedic Studies
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Vedic Management Center
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University of Metaphysical Sciences
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In Progress
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In Progress with Komilla Sutton
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University of Metaphysics - In Progress
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100 of 120 semester hours in Social Justice & International Studies
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Sound Healing Academy with Natalie Brown
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Successful Living, Iowa City, Iowa
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Inside Out Reentry Community
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Iowa City Human Rights Commission
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Certification & Study with Dr. Lisa Vest and Rohini Moradi
