Spaciousness in the body equals spaciousness in the mind.

Farida is the Director of The Yoga Institute at The Institute for Spirituality and Health, home to the oldest yoga teacher training program in Texas. She studied under founder Lex Gillan for over a decade before he entrusted the Institute to her. Today she leads its teacher trainings, guiding future teachers alongside nurses, psychotherapists, and clinicians who carry these practices into hospitals, schools, and communities. Beyond the Institute, she has brought yoga and meditation to students and faculty in Houston’s public and private schools and to businesses and organizations across the city.

At Namma, Farida offers private sessions in yoga, movement, meditation, yoga nidra, sound baths & vibrational healing, and sacred feminine movement. With more than thirty years of practice and over two decades of full-time teaching, Farida brings that depth to one-on-one work. She holds an E-RYT 500, is a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider, and has completed multiple trainings and certifications in yoga, meditation, sound healing, vibrational healing, and other movement modalities. She also holds a BA in Psychology and Political Science. Her work has been featured on Houston’s Channel 2 and CW39, and in the Houston Chronicle, Tanglewood Magazine, and West U Magazine. Private sessions with her are deeply personal. Each one is built around you: your body, your history, what you’re carrying, and what you’re ready to move toward.

A session may include yoga postures, pranayama, meditation, mantra, Alchemy crystal bowls, and psychosomatic exploration, an approach that treats body and mind as one conversation. Her meditation teaching is practical and grounded, offering tools you can return to long after you leave the room. She also leads Yoga Nidra, a guided practice of deep, conscious rest that calms the nervous system and restores the body from the inside out.

Farida works with people at every stage. Some come with chronic pain, hypermobility, injury, or limited mobility. Some come for nervous system support and deeper rest. Some come simply wanting to feel at home in their bodies again. For women seeking to reconnect with their bodies through rhythm, sensuality, and self-expression, she also offers Sacred Feminine Movement, rooted in her years of teaching bellydance.

Working with Farida begins with a conversation about what brings you in, how you’re feeling, and what you hope to change. From there, she shapes each session to meet you, adjusting as you grow, and often sends you home with simple practices or journaling to continue the work between visits. Her students, including clients at J. Flowers Health Institute, describe her as calm, precise, and deeply warm. She meets each person exactly where they are, and then helps them go further than they thought they could.