Taylor was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up on farmland in Western Maryland. Although that place will always feel like home, she’s lived in Arizona for decades, loving the big sky and spaciousness. After high school in Tempe and college back on the east coast, Taylor moved to Tucson in the mid-2000s. She built a life here raising her daughter, Margot, and pursuing a career in education.
For her livelihood, Taylor currently holds a diverse variety of positions. At Pima Community College, she teaches introductory composition courses. She’s also a regional administrator for Poetry Out Loud—a national program that awards college scholarships to high school students who compete by reciting poetry on stage. Taylor is a contracted teaching artist for the Write the Community program at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. She facilitates poetry explorations both with K-12 public school students and incarcerated youth at the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center. From this work comes an annual anthology of poetry written by the youth in the program. (Taylor has copies to share if you want to check it out!)
With an imaginative approach to life, Taylor connects to the sacred through creative practice and land tending. She finds spiritual dimensions in many things, including cultivating relationships with the natural world and finding inspiration for art and soul work through dreaming.
Taylor is an embodied keeper of intuitive dream-tending practices. She offers one-on-one private dream work sessions and facilitates in-person and online dream circles, which are collaborative experiential soul work explorations. To learn more about these offerings, visit her website, symbodythedream.com.
Taylor has nurtured her own spiritual life independently. Her mother’s father was a minister, but the church existed adjacent to her, not something she participated in. Ten years ago, when she first started practicing yoga, the studio she joined was focused on athleticism and flexibility. She relied on the practice for mental health and stress management, but also felt competitiveness and showiness in the physical expression there.
When Taylor started a practice with Yoga 4 All in January 2024, she glimpsed the spiritual side of yoga. She came to her first class at the urging of her yogi friends and was impressed by the warm welcome and the immediate expansion of her community. She appreciated the sangha’s many offerings, from the range of teaching styles and use of the gong to potlucks and camping retreats. She felt a fun lightness at her first potluck and also a sense of being deeply supported in a community space.
Through kundalini, Taylor has noticed surprising physical shifts. She appreciates breath practices like breath of fire and root lock that focus attention on the core and has felt a resulting personal mastery over her body that she has come to rely on even outside her yoga practice. In class, the chanting and singing feel meaningful; she especially loves Aad Guray Nameh and The Long Time Sun.
For Taylor, this yoga practice isn’t just about the kriyas or mantras; it’s about feeling a sense of belonging and authentically working on being in community in a balanced way. She notices how the sangha holds a standard for togetherness beyond just showing up on the mat. The many different pieces that are offered—monthly themes, retreats, shared meals, and tea—add up to a holistic expression of beautiful, rich, dynamic connections and an artistry of devotion.
Taylor feels that she’s at a beginning level with kundalini yoga and suspects she has a long way to go for mastery. Yet she doesn’t feel pressure to attain mastery, rather, she sees kundalini as a whole world that can be explored deeper and deeper and an expansive practice that she can grow old with. She’s content to follow the formulas and see what unlocks. In the meantime, her precious, wonderful sangha is what keeps her coming back.
We are so grateful for your presence, Taylor, and all the ways you enhance our community.
