Photo credit Kitfox Valentín
Moved to guide and empower individuals who are inspired to embody their highest potential, Jessica communicates a passion for health and wellness practices. From an early age, she has been curious and invested in exploring and deepening the connection between her mind, body, and spirit through the medium of dance. At the age of sixteen, she continued to foster this connection through the completion of all four levels of training required to become a certified Reiki Master Practitioner. Jessica pursued her dream by moving to New York to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she graduated with honors, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and a minor in Psychology. During her final year of studies at NYU, she followed the innate calling to take on her role as a teacher, certified and licensed as a yoga teacher and Mind Body Dancer® teacher under the direction of TaraMarie Perri through the Perri Institute for Mind and Body. Throughout her professional career, she has had the privilege of performing works by acclaimed choreographers such as Florian Bilbao, Reut Shemesh, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Zoe Scofield, Allyson Green, Deborah Jowitt, and Renee Redding-Jones. She has trained with Elbert Watson, The School of Richmond Ballet, The Ailey School, Strictly Seattle and NYC’s Gaga Winter Intensive. In 2015, Jessica founded Luminous Architecture, an integrative health and wellness practice with an emphasis on holistic lifestyle design. In addition to working privately with clients, she also teaches open classes and workshops rooted in mindful movement, restorative yoga, and energy work. Jessica is based in Portland, OR where she expresses all of the facets of her ever-evolving luminous architecture as a professional dancer, teacher, and healer.
PERRI INSTITUTE LICENSES
yoga, 2014
mind body dancer, 2014
SPECIALTIES
yoga
restorative
kids + teens
reiki
DEGREES
BFA, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
CONTINUING ED + PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Certified Reiki Master Practitioner
LOCATION
portland, oregon
what led you to study yoga and mind/body practices? what appealed to you?
Ironically, I really didn't like yoga until taking TaraMarie's classes my freshman year at NYU. Her approach to teaching dancers informed my yoga practice in a way that made sense to my dancer body and mentality. Through experiential learning, I began to understand the value of yoga - not just the asana, but the self-study, the breath work, and other facets that aligned well with my own evolving sense of spirituality. For me, it comes down to the essence of a practice. Dance, yoga, energy work, and holistic health and wellness are these multi-dimensional practices that I find to be able to integrate so fluidly into my life. I'll never have it all figured out because the depth to their essence is vast and untimely. That's extremely exciting - to know that I will always be able to grow and evolve with these practices, which is why I continue to study. They all resonate with me on a deeper level and enrich my life in ways that inspire me to share these practices with others.
what does the student/teacher relationship mean to you?
I believe we are all each other's teachers, and we are all each other's students. There is an equal energetic exchange between a teacher and student, not a one-way transfer of energy from teacher to student. The teacher teaches the student and the student learns from the teacher. The teacher also learns from the student, as the student teaches the teacher. We serve as guides to all along our paths of consciousness, just as everything around us serves as our guides along this pathway.