Tamara Jeffries, RYT-200, been a health writer and editor for national publications including Essence, where she was Executive Editor; and Health, where she oversaw coverage of mental, emotional and spiritual health. She was also Editor-in-Chief of HealthQuest: The Publication of Black Wellness and a contributing writer for the National Black Women’s Health Imperative.

In 2009, Tamara was awarded the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism; she was an Association of Health Care Journalists-National Library of Medicine fellow in 2012.

She is currently an associate professor of journalism at Bennett College for Women, where she also teaches the first for-credit yoga course at a historically Black college.  There, she has developed an interdisciplinary mindfulness program designed to help college students develop skills to enhance mental health, cope with stress and make purposeful life decisions.

She practices and teaches with a devotion to what she calls “whole yoga”—encouraging a conscious mindfulness of yoga principles; honoring the history, culture and evolution of yoga, and offering sound instruction that respects all bodies, beings and spirits.

Tamara has an interest in issues of diversity and cultural sensitivity in yoga communities; and in how yoga can be used to encourage mental and emotional wellness among people of color.

Tamara completed yoga teacher training with Terry Brown at Triad Yoga Institute in Greensboro, NC in 2013, and is registered with Yoga Alliance and is a member of Yoga Service Council.