YOUR RETREAT CURATORS
Dr. Sheena Sood (she/her) is a Philly-based, second-generation Desi American, healing justice visionary, yoga teacher, and activist scholar.
As a certified advanced yoga teacher, Sheena credits her arrival into a yoga practice to her grandmother, Biji, and her certification as a teacher to Yogi Sivadas, founder of the Kailash Tribal School in McLeodganj, Dharamshala, India. Sheena is committed to collective liberation, abolitionist politics, and radical care. She strives to curate yoga, chakra, and ayurvedic workshops through a decolonial, healing justice framework, often encouraging students to imagine how our practice can energize us toward embodied liberatory praxis and values.
Sheena completed her PhD in Sociology at Temple University. As a scholar, her research explores the political mobilization and alliance-building efforts of immigrant and Black and Brown communities in the U.S.; as well as the morality and weaponization of yoga globally, through its widespread popularity and practice in India, the U.S., and Israel (occupied Palestine).
Sheena enjoys teaching preschoolers and high schoolers mindfulness and yoga, creating plant-based magic in her kitchen, practicing joy with her sister tribe, and dreaming up healing justice curricula. Sheena is available for bookings at yoga studios, universities and student-life multicultural centers. She is also currently working to manifest her own business, Santosh's Healing and Yoga Nest (SHYN), a community wellness space that will serve communities in her home of Philadelphia and beyond. She can be reached at sheena.sood1@gmail.com
-------
Empress Thandi Wise is a certified yoga teacher ECYT 800, massage therapist LMT, Womb Wellness Practitioner, Certified and registered Colon Hydro Therapist, with IACT, International Association of Colon Hydro-Therapy, Holistic Medicine Woman, Birth Doula, Full Lotus Birth Practitioner and EFT (tapping coach).
Studied at Temple University, Yoga Life Institute, Queen Afua Wellness Institute (QAWI) and St John's Academy of Natural Sciences. Empress Thandi is the founder of Rasta Wellness Centre in Treasure Beach, where she teaches holistic lifestyle and yoga.
Empress Thandi moved back to Jamaica from Philadelphia, with her family to share her passion for ancestral wisdom and organic farming when she noticed the numbers for non-communicable diseases was on a rise in Jamaica.
Health and Wellness is her ministry and passion of which she shares her love of both. A mother of 5 children, 5 dogs, eight goats, 8 chickens and married to International recording artist Stephen "Ras-Katri" Wise, who is featured on two of Stevie Wonder's albums. Her mission is to help all beings activate their natural innate wisdom to heal thyself, using Ancestral Wisdom.