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Community Corner

Who's Who: Nicole Becker, Owner of Ojas Yoga Center

Every weekday we feature an interview with a person who lives or works in El Cerrito.

Name: Nicole Becker 

Age: 36

What does Ojas mean? It’s a Sanskrit word: It means the essence of health and vitality. It’s like the foundation of our health. It’s a word from Ayurveda, which I studied. The idea behind Ojas is that our center here is really about establishing health, whether it be through yoga practice, meditation practice or natural health.

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What’s you in a nutshell? I’m a yoga therapist. I’m looking at yoga as really a holistic practice. My whole intention for this space is to get us back to seeing yoga not just as a fitness pursuit but as a whole life practice. When I work with people, I’m working on not only physically, like how can I make you feel more peaceful, healthy and strong in your body, but how can that translate into our inner life off the mat. How can we feel happy and balanced inside, not just for those few moments that we’re feeling good. … It’s like looking at your life as an ecological system rather than just, “I get my fitness here.”

I’ve been studying holistic medicine and yoga for nearly 20 years. And I’ve taught in this area going over six years now.

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 Why El Cerrito? Well, I live in El Cerrito. I’m a Bay Area native; I grew up in San Anselmo and came over to the East Bay to go to school at Cal. I was studying anthropology and ecology. I’ve always been interested in humans and health and all of that. I had a long-standing yoga practice all through that. When I had my first child, I realized I needed to rearrange my work life a little bit so I could be at home more. At that time I found a teacher that I really jelled with. All of a sudden I was like – I had never thought of being a teacher before – “Oh, I can do this!” Total light bulb. I’ve always been interested in educating. I’ve always been a good teacher.

 What did you want to do before that? I was in urban ecology. I was doing community garden work and establishing sustainable food systems. I was in that sort of food advocacy area. Before that I had thought I would be some sort of anthropologist traveling and studying herbal medicine with some tribe in the jungle. The common thread has always been health, healing of the whole system. … I feel like if we’re established in peaceful and calm and loving inside then we make the right choices for our environment and our health. Whatever work I do, I always want to feel like it’s at the root. It’s that holistic approach.

 What do you think of El Cerrito? I love El Cerrito. I grew up in Marin. It’s nice, but it’s kind of calm. I like the vibrancy of the East Bay. San Francisco is too crazy for me. Even Berkeley was getting a little like there’s a lot going on. I like the residential feel of El Cerrito, but there’s still a lot of transfer from Berkeley and everything’s close. I just live walking distance from the Plaza so my life is perfect (laughs). 

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