A product of the 60's in New York City, Sahara was fully engaged in the activities of the time—from Anti-War protests to Civil Rights demonstrations—and eventually discovered Yoga, becoming one of the first group of practitioners and teachers at the Integral Yoga Institute, and a vegetarian when it wasn’t fashionable. The flexibility developed in both body and mind from that path, has helped her maintain a youthful spirit and attitude, and makes her age irrelevant and even absurd. She was also the only young/white woman driving a taxi in NYC in the early 70's, an adventure indeed.
"Although I was brought up well, appreciate beauty, and enjoy fine things, I wasn't especially driven to achieve on the material plane, as once I became aware of the spiritual path I considered the embodiment of Consciousness to be my essential work; so through the years I have done more or less whatever presented itself to me, always somehow getting by, engaging in a wide range of activities and experiencing at least three or four different sides of the tracks, from first class to no class.
Among other things, I've worked as a Headstart assistant, bank teller, the ubiquitous waitress, freelance photographer/journalist, organic wine salesman, natural food store cashier, carpenter's assistant, and private caterer. I've been a live-in housekeeper/gardener for a rock star in Connecticut, and live-in housekeeper/cook for a celebrity in Beverly Hills. In Montana, I organized weekly art and music shows; designed and executed a traffic safety and courtesy campaign with the cooperation of the Bozeman PD; and taught Hatha Yoga and classes in "Consciousness" at the Gallatin Valley Detention Center.
I've slept in a sleeping bag on a marble floor in the Plaka in Athens, wrapped in a blanket in a hammock in the rain on the island of Kauai, and in suites at the Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong and the Oberoi in New Delhi. I've hitch-hiked from Paris to Istanbul and back, and traveled first-class around the world.
I know what it is to be comfortable, to have plenty, and to have nothing. I know what it is to have to ask for food when you’re hungry, to ask for shelter from the cold at night, and to sleep on a couch in a public library during the day, because you have nowhere else to go. I know what it is to have a body so weakened by disease that you can barely get up to use the bathroom, have no appetite or even strength to eat, and can only lie in bed, helpless, for months. And I know what it is to be so broken that if some miracle doesn’t save you, you have nothing to live for—the end of the rope."
Sahara's greatest pleasure is being in Nature—and she's nourished by having her hands-in-dirt.
