About

About Theresa

LEGIT.yoga believes that yoga and mindfulness is for everybody.

Most good ideas begin as a seed. Over time, on purpose or not, that seed is watered and eventually the idea will grow. The seed for LEGIT.yoga was planted over a decade ago when its Theresa wandered into her first yoga class. Years later, after spending that decade serving the community as a social worker, Theresa decided to become a yoga teacher with the goal of using yoga to address trauma.

Founder & Yoga Teacher: Theresa Okokon, BSW & Therapeutic CYT-500

photo by Mariah Dennis

Theresa began practicing yoga in 2006 when she decided to join the Peace Corps. She was not in great shape, so she joined a gym figuring that Peace Corps Volunteers probably needed to be fit to climb volcanoes and paddle canoes in the Amazon to get to their mud huts. At the gym and unhappy on the elliptical machine: Theresa wandered into a yoga class, and fell in love. Over time she learned that she was wrong about Peace Corps (she ended up living in a city, with no mud huts in sight), and she was wrong about yoga, too.

She has since come to understand that yoga is about so much more than preparing the body to be physically fit to survive in the Amazon: for Theresa, yoga is a metaphor for life. Theresa's approach to yoga and mindfulness is to help participants find a feeling that they have learned something new (no matter how many times they have practiced), that they have faced a challenge, and that they have accomplished something. Theresa sees yoga and mindfulness as a vehicle for change.

Theresa has a Bachelor of Social Work from 2005 at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay; and she is a 500-hour Certified Yoga Teacher (previously registered as an E-RYT200 and YACEP with Yoga Alliance). She completed her 300-Hour teacher training with Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy School in 2018, and her 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training with Open Doors Yoga Studios in 2014. She has also completed a Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training; a 100-Hour Trauma-Informed Mind Body Facilitator Training with the YogaHOPE TIMBo Program in 2015; and attended a three-day training on body-based trauma work with Bessel van der Kolk on his research and work from the Body Keeps the Score. It is important to mention that while the methodologies and knowledge Theresa obtained from her many courses of study, she does not align herself necessarily with some of the particular teachers she has had, and she would love to discussing this further with you if you would like.

Theresa can also be found developing yoga teachers of the future at as a guest faculty member for the 200-Hour social justice focused & trauma informed Yoga Teacher Training at 4 Corners Yoga + Wellness in Dorchester. Off the mat, Theresa is the co-host of the television series Stories from the Stage, a collaboration of WGBH, WorldChannel and Massmouth, and she supports the Development team at the International Institute of New England.

LEGIT.yoga was the recipient of the 2015-16 Kip Tiernan Social Justice Fellowship from Rosie's Place, which provided the generous and necessary funding for LEGIT.yoga to become a reality.