Third Root Practitioners
Jacoby Ballard (co-founder)
jacoby@thirdroot.org
Jacoby Ballard is an herbalist, yoga teacher, organizer, and fundraiser at Third Root. He is a country boy from the mountains of Colorado planted in the vibrant and pulsing environment of New York City.
Jacoby studied western herbalism at the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine and with Robin Rose Bennett, and has been working with clients for five years. He conducts herbal consultations at Third Root and is a co-facilitator of Third Root’s Herbal Education Program. He has taught at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine, Goddard College, the Trans Health Conference, and for Just Food and the Rock Dove Collective here in New York.
He also is an organizer of RadHerb, the Northeast Radical Healthcare Network (www.radherb.org), which has put on three conferences in the Northeast concerning the intersection of herbalism and social justice, and emphasizing topics within herbalism that aren’t very available, such as herbs for eating disorders, transitioning off of psych meds, and other topics. RadHerb is now working on developing an in-depth leadership development training for healthcare practitioners, and will offer this 4-day training in New York City over Labor Day 2010.
Jacoby has practiced yoga for 12 years and has taught for 10 years. He received his 200-hour certification from Kashi Ashram in Atlanta, and is now completing his 500-hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu in Massachussetts. Until teaching at Third Root, Jacoby only taught in non-traditional spaces for yoga: art studios, non-profit offices, homeless shelters, and at conferences. Jacoby loves working with students of all bodies, genders, and experiences, and offers his students precise alignment, the lessons of yogic scriptures suited to daily life in the West, and physical challenge in an atmosphere of love and compassion for where the body is at right now. He is in love with the study and practice of yoga and has helped to create a socially-just minded atmosphere for the study of yoga at Third Root.
Jacoby’s passion is holistic transgender health, approaching it from his study of nutrition, herbs, and yoga as well as from a policy perspective. When he worked at the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Jacoby was instrumental in passing an organizational healthcare subsidy to augment transition costs. He has worked with dozens of trans and gender non-conforming clients, taught many workshops on the topic, and teaches three weekly Queer and Trans Yoga classes (two at Third Root, one at the LGBT Community Center in NYC).
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