Coming Out & Beyond: LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 5 Episode 16 | Krista Oakes

Coming Out + Beyond | LGBTQIA+ Stories

Krista Oakes is a certified yoga and meditation teacher specializing in working with beginners and seniors. She teaches gentle and chair yoga classes in Daytona Beach, Florida and nationally, online. Krista leads group wellness retreats and teaches yoga and meditations to corporations. Her classes focus on safety, proper body alignment, mindfulness, and trusting oneself. Krista's approach to teaching integrates the mindfulness of meditation, lifestyle coaching, and the compassionate approach of Kripalu yoga rooted in faith and spirituality, with humor sprinkled throughout. Krista received her BA from Muhlenberg College where she first discovered the thrill of expressing herself through writing. As a yoga teacher, she enjoys reconnecting with that joy through blogging and communicating with her students. In January 2024, Krista published her first book, Shedding Shame: Finding Freedom to Live an Authentic Life, where she takes the reader on a journey through her life's challenges. She shares about being a child growing up with gay parents, losing her dad to AIDS, and the shame of her marriage full of dysfunction and mental illness which ended in divorce. Krista shares her path to unravel the shame that held her back, where's she's been, and how she's gotten to where she is today, living her best, authentic life.

Learn more about Krista's gentle yoga programs here: https://www.daytonayogawithkrista.com/

You can find Krista's book, Shedding Shame: Finding Freedom to Live an Authentic Life here: https://www.daytonayogawithkrista.com/sheddingshame

Krista's "coming out" song is Defying Gravity from the musical Wicked: https://youtu.be/MslDnwerQRA?si=ip60m30HHGF0d02N

Two books that have influenced Krista are Daring Greatly by Brené Brown https://brenebrown.com/book/daring-greatly/

and Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33516773-big-little-lies