For Tina Porter, yoga is not about the sequences of shapes. Rather, it is a lifelong practice of returning home to oneself. The Denver-based yoga instructor says she embodies breath, strength, resilience, presence and peace to hold both grief and joy in her daily life.

Porter didn’t find yoga; yoga found her. At 22, while living in Los Angeles, a serendipitous last-minute invitation led Porter to her first class. What started as a curiosity became two or three classes a week for over a decade.

“I wasn’t just sharpening a tool,” Porter says. “I was unknowingly building a survival kit. One that I still contribute to and reach for every single day. Our body can tremble with turbulence, muscles shaking and our minds quaking, but we learn to breathe bigger and exhale longer which allows us to soften into things that are hard. When we do this consistently, we grow reservoirs of patience, tolerance, courage, benevolence, the ability to stay focused and so much more.”

Photos by Kelly Shroads/essenceandartistry.com

Since 2001, Porter has brought her passion off her mat and fills space with it. She’s built an online library of 300-plus classes and teaches in person at Samadhi Yoga Sangha in Denver.

“There’s nothing more in my life that I believe in than the magic we receive when we get quiet and still,” Porter emphasizes. “Conscious breath is the key to presence, sensuality, sensitivity and getting back your strength — a power that we may not even know we are capable of.”

Porter’s family faced profound adversity when her late son Brody, once a vibrant mountain athlete and yoga practitioner, was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive brain tumor, Diffuse Midline Glioma H3K27M, at the height of COVID-19. Until his final days at the age of 14, Brody was cherished by all, graciously leading with love and fearless kindness.

Brody’s legacy lives on in how Porter shows up for others. As a mother, she has learned to stay present amid deep loss. Now, Porter walks beside fellow students of life navigating their own loss — a death, breakup, child leaving the nest or job loss — offering ways to move through pain without bypassing it. Through supported poses, breathwork, somatic grounding and simple rituals, she helps people find their way back to center.

Grief does not simply reside in the mind. “It lives in the jaw, the belly, the back, the breath,” Porter says. “When you acknowledge that, then the healing can begin and it’s less theoretical, more embodied.”

Porter is a firm believer that the body remembers everything. She emphasizes the importance of expressing feelings, so stories do not “lodge in our tissues, our organs and every system in the body, creating aches, pains and dis-ease.”

Whether or not you live in Colorado, Porter’s practice is at your fingertips. Her Mindful Life Cleanse is a 28-day personal healing journey; it explores and redefines the relationship with all things we consume: food, drinks, medications, technology, relationships and anything else you have an unconscious loyalty to. Once you purchase the program, it is yours forever.

The mother, wife and yoga instructor is also adding “author” to her list of titles. Porter is working on a book about how “a close family of four enduring the worst possible situation … continue on with open hearts.” It is a book for anyone looking for a gentle place to land, offering breath practices, journal prompts, healing movement and more.

tinaporteryoga.com

Chloe Wasserstrom
Community Engagement Coordinator
@chlowass

Originally published in the winter + spring 2025-26 issue of Well.