Jasmine Tarkeshi

An Iranian-American raised across countries, cities, and traditions, Jasmine Tarkeshi has spent her life steeped in dualism: from sacred Eastern spiritual traditions to the exhilarating dance, music, and art scenes of the eighties and nineties in New York and San Francisco. At a young age this dichotomy served as both a fertilizer for creativity- and a source of uncertainty in finding her place in the world. Being introduced to yoga and meditation by her mother was the link that bridged this duality and culminated in her co-creating Laughing Lotus Yoga Centers in NYC in 1999 and bringing it to San Francisco in 2007, along with its celebrated style of vinyasa, Lotus Flow.

Jasmine has stood up to injustice since childhood, when she first became aware of human, animal, and environmental suffering. This activism became integral to her personal yoga practice and was also central to Laughing Lotus with Love Saves the Day, the non-profit offshoot of the yoga center. Every month, the studio highlighted a different organization to raise community awareness and funds contributed via donation-based classes.

She believes yoga is a practice to rewire our brains and disrupt the patterns that breed suffering. By awakening the qualities of love, honesty, courage, and service on our mats, we are better equipped to co-create a more loving, caring, and just world for all people to thrive.

Jasmine’s classes offer thoughtful and inventive sequencing, soulful music, and physical and emotional intensity with yoga wisdom to create an integrated experience that awakens students’ courage, compassion, and joy. By sparking these often-dormant traits, she encourages her students to live a conscious life off the mat to invoke their own healing- and in turn, serve their communities with love.

Jasmine has studied with many of the great teachers, mystics, and sages in the US and India across yoga’s vast healing traditions, including bhakti, ayurveda, karma, tantra, yantra, meditation, mantra, and vinyasa. Her comprehension of yoga’s spiritual texts and traditions along with her knack for weaving this insight in her classes has made her a highly sought-out international teacher.

Jasmine lives in San Francisco with her seven-year old daughter Indigo and is passionate about raising conscious, confident kids - and being a mirror to reflect those qualities upon them.