Tameeka Pigford also known as Meeks was a New York City Public school teacher from 2002-2019. She taught Title I students in the Brooklyn neighborhoods Bushwick, Prospect Heights, and East New York. Born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant during the crack era she witnessed a lot of trauma in her community and with the help of teachers, she learned that education was her conduit to breaking the cycles of poverty. While nurturing her students she soon learned that she was an empath. She would take the issues that her students were going through to heart. Feeling drained she sought painting as a refuge but that wasn’t enough to quiet her spirit.
She found yoga in 2007 but put a pin in it and in 2018 yoga found her. Two of her coworkers knew that her bucket list comprised of being a certified yogi by the age of 40, they saw an ad for Breathe for Change on Facebook and both sent her the posts at separate times. She knew that this was confirmation that she needed to see it through. At the time she was also in grad school working on her second Masters and completing her yoga program. Yikes! She would complete her 200-hour yoga training and receive her Masters of Science Educational Leadership from Hunter College. After 17 years of serving and healing her community, Tameeka decided to resign from her post as an English teacher and move to Georgia to heal, recalibrate, and restore. She understands that she can not be a vessel for her community if her vessel isn’t full.
She is currently working on her interior decor line of custom one of one planters, vases, and light switch covers. She is the founder of Breuchkelen (pronounced Brooklyn) Eclectic using Chromotherapy (the science of color ) to elevate and enhance the energy in spaces. She has also rolled out her mat during the pandemic to offer free and low-cost yoga classes to those that need a healing space like meditation, yoga, and breathing to center themselves. She currently teaches two gentle yoga and meditation classes: Aligning Dem Chakras (Wednesdays at 6 PM eastern and Forgiveness Yoga, Saturdays at 11 AM eastern).
Her objective is to demystify the notion that you have to look a certain way or to be a certain size, be super agile, or be an expert in yoga to practice it. She has replaced her teaching in a classroom to teach on her mat. Being an educator is something that will always be a part of her journey and she looks forward to serving her community through education in the future, but for now, she can be found at Therapy | Mindful Life Services | Virtual Yoga
