About Yamuna Devi Dasi (Geneva Elise)
Hi! My name is Yamuna and I am an educator, yoga instructor, and intuitive tarot reader living in Humboldt County, California. I believe that tarot and yoga are both beautiful liberation tools that can help us connect with ourselves and the divine. As a reader and teacher, I love holding space for others as they navigate their inner work and healing.
My mission as a healer is to offer you tools to develop a deeper understanding of yourself, a more secure attachment with the unknown, and a clearer picture of the healing work necessary to move you out of suffering and towards your life's true purpose.
Background and Experience
I grew up on a dairy farm in the Central Valley of California. After high school, I moved to the Bay Area to attend Mills College where I studied English literature and women’s studies. I became interested in yoga as a teenager, and in 2017, I attended my first 200 hour yoga teacher training at The Bhakti Yoga School located in the Sacred Valley of Peru. It was during this time that I was introduced to many different kinds of yoga. It was a transformative experience and I hold a special place in my heart for Peru and the incredible teachers I met there. Shortly after I became a yoga teacher, I picked up a tarot deck and began a regular practice of reading intuitively for myself.
Eight years later, I returned to the Bhakti Yoga School to certify as a 500 hour advanced RYT. I studied Ayurveda, Thai Massage, and Restorative Healing. Most importantly I received a spiritual initiation into the Bhakti path from my teachers Chaitanya Nitai Das and Shyam Vallabhi Devi Dasi, and my yogic name: Yamuna Devi Dasi. Yamuna is a sacred river in India, that features prominently in the stories of Krishna. It's a name that reminds me to stay immersed in the flow of life, to surrender, and to embrace the constancy of change.
About Pop Culture Healing
Pop Culture Healing was born from my desire to create a healing space that felt vibrant, joyful, and fun. So often healing is synonymous with calm and tranquility and I do LOVE those qualities. However, there's always room for more joy, and I was curious about how joy and healing might look when woven together into a single aesthetic (think really colorful chakra vibes). I've also found myself inspired by the way #MeToo, mental health awareness, and the Black Lives Matter movement have changed the way we tell stories in popular culture as well as who gets to tell the story.
Narratives of care, empowerment, and healing are emerging all over the place while old narratives are being challenged. Pop Culture Healing aims to highlight and rewrite some of these stories. Powerful archetypes are all around us, whether they be goddesses, superheroes, or real life celebrities. The stories we give our attention to in pop culture have the ability to lift us up or keep us wallowing in the dirt. And I believe that simply changing the way we tell stories has the power to heal culture.