“Tara’s guidance has changed my life. Her deceptively simple exercises have freed my spine from half a lifetime’s worth of calcification and restored my access to an inner source of energy I had lost with my youth. She’s a gifted teacher and deeply wise shaman with a seemingly-limitless capacity for compassion and encouragement. I feel so fortunate to have found her!”
“I had been searching for a yoga class that was more than physical, more than an athletic competition, more than simply exercise. Sometime during my first class with Tara, I knew I was home.”
“Thank you Tara for teaching me an easy yet powerful Lokananda yoga home practice that I used as a guide through a very challenging transition in my life. It continues to be a foundational tool for coming home to my body.”
“I am an 89 year old male artist-educator who had until 4 or 5 years ago only a casual and mostly unsuccessful experience with Yoga. But then I had the opportunity to join one of Tara Boyce’s weekend retreats which included daily yoga sessions.
Under Tara’s instruction I realized for the first time not only what yoga was about but what benefits it could offer me as a mind-body-spirit discipline suitable to my age. I also realized as a long-time teacher of art myself, that Tara is both a natural and master teacher who gave me the gift of what yoga could be for me.
After my first experience, I enrolled in a 10 day intensive with Tara in Hawaii, and a year later another Yoga training retreat with her in Colorado and then another in Arizona. Since then I have not only continued my personal practice, but taken private lessons from Tara whenever she was available in Tucson.
So what have I learned from her? First of all Tara’s attention to each student is caring and precise. In her retreats, usually two sessions a day lasting 2 ½ hours long I scarcely noticed the time as I was so deeply engaged. Her verbal meditations at the beginning and end of each session are profound explorations of one’s inner awareness that are by now natural to my own practice, preparing me to experience each posture with full inner attention.
I also noticed that Tara worked with me with each pose until I not only understood the posture, but could hold it comfortably right on the edge of my ability, and often for many minutes. In other words she taught me to start gently and comfortably at my level of skill, and as time has gone on, I continually improve and adapt to new levels of flexibility on my own.
I am also aware now that yoga, while a practice, is also a way of being, as I walk, rest, stand or sit in all the ordinary movements of my day. It has transformed my relationship with my aging body that gives me unexpected ease and flexibility I did not expect to have as I enter my 90th year of life. Which is to say Tara gave me the ‘experience’ of yoga in a way that is now with me daily and in a certain sense she is too.”