Our Mission

GaneshSpace is a 501c3 mindfulness organization that creates healing spaces for historically excluded communities and social justice education for all.


Through embodied practice and compassionate conversations, we are a community of mindful changemakers moving towards personal and collective liberation. We believe that our breath can transform and free all of us — in this moment and beyond.

Our Founding Teachers

GaneshSpace was founded by a team of mindfulness teachers who felt displaced and disempowered within the wellness industry — and the world. Founded in India, raised on Lenape land (NYC) and now breathing online, this passion project grew into a community. BIPOC-and-Queer-led, our Founding Teachers saw the need to create spaces where people could explore their sense of belonging and wholeness within themselves and the world. Read more about GaneshSpace’s founding story.

The GaneshSpace teacher network spans across the country with teachers coming from many backgrounds — Black, API, Latinx, white, straight, queer, fat, skinny, she, he, they. It’s with this diverse insight that we have developed a wide range of mindfulness programs that explore the intersections within ourselves and the world.
Our intention is simple: To help people see that personal and collective change can start with your breath.
Kim Thai

Kim Thai

(she/her)

Linda Lopes

Linda Lopes

(she/her)

Updated Tisha Headshot

Tisha Samuels

(she/her)

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Kristina Lopez

(she/they)

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Vuzmal Sharma

(they/she)

Daniel Sannito

Daniel Sannito

(they/them/theirs)

We Believe

GaneshSpace's Core Practices

At GaneshSpace, we have created and developed six core practices that live and breathe at the intersection of mindfulness and social justice. programming is developed with much care to uphold these practices in all that we do.
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Embodying social justice is the active practice of everyday equity through unbiased compassion towards others, deep dismantling of the systems we participate in and listening to our bodies. 

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Understanding our social location is the active practice of turning outwards to cultivate awareness around our unique positionality, power and privilege; looking deeply at the biases we carry; and seeing the interdependent nature of our world.

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Embracing your authentic self is the active practice of turning inwards to fight against the narrative that your expression is not good enough and to honor all the identities we hold by showing up in spaces as we are (as safety allows).

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Honoring our ancestors and reclaiming spiritual traditions is the active racial justice practice of not forgetting our own personal history or the land in which we occupy; and to share existing rituals and practices through an accessible and inclusive lens.

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Radical rest is the active practice of pushing against the capitalist world we were born into and fighting the ingrained compulsion to dehumanize ourselves through work.

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Joy is Liberation is the understanding that joy is attainable and accessible to us in the present moment and lives within us and is also the radical practice of alchemizing our suffering into joy and light.

Our Impact

Our Teachers

Kim Thai

Kim Thai (she/her) is an Emmy-award-winning producer; writer, social justice advocate and mindfulness teacher. She founded GaneshSpace because she was seeking a community where she could be her most authentic self in her healing journey. As a queer Asian woman and a proud kid of Vietnamese refugees, she shares Buddhist teachings to help people find the freedom and power that lives within themselves. She has personally experienced how our breath can change the way we see and show up in the world and believes deeply that equity is possible and can be achieved if we start reflecting and taking action now.

Linda Lopes

Linda Lopes (she/her) is a yoga, meditation, and Reiki practitioner based in Brooklyn, New York serving youth and adults. She discovered her mat a decade ago through a mentor, who she always refers to as the catalyst for change in her life. While in search of happiness, joy, and love; she soon realized that what she and most of us long for can be found within. As a Founding Teacher at GaneshSpace, she actively creates and holds spaces for BIPOC to come together and heal. She strongly believes that it is in power of brave, authentic, trusting, and loving communities that we can create change in the world.

Sunaina Rangnekar
Sunaina Madhav Dāsī (they/them) is an infinite, multi-dimensional energy incarnated into this material form. They immigrated from India to the unceded ancestral homelands of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe Nations- now colonized as Denver, Colorado. Their yoga practice is deeply rooted in Hinduism and Bhakti. They follow the lineage and teachings of their ancestors and Sri Paramahamsa Vishwananda. Sunaina uses neurodivergent superpowers to create a more community-centered world that focuses on individual healing by embracing our unique truth. They believe that the answer is already within us when choosing self-love, accountability, and awareness. With their unique lens to the yogic path, Sunaina creates spaces to reclaim yoga, decolonize minds, and abolish oppressive systems that affect us at an energetic and societal level.
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Tisha Samuels (she/her) is a Founding Teacher of GaneshSpace. She is a a yoga and ayurveda student and teacher in Pittsburgh, PA (originally Iroquios, Lenape and Shawnee land). She strives to create space for students to learn and use mindfulness tools to bring them back to their highest and truest selves and to discover how that affects and connects them with the world around them. Becoming a part of GaneshSpace was a necessity, not a decision. With so much hatred and misunderstanding built within the systems that we live, it is a priority to Tisha to be part of the movement towards collective change. It is true dharma to participate in an organization that is centered around mindful action.

Felipe Gonzalez

Felipe Gonzalez (he/him) is a certified 500 ERYT, Katonah Yoga teacher, and Founding Teacher at GaneshSpace. Based in Santa Monica, California (Tongva land) he has spent the last six years learning, unlearning, and exploring the intersections of yoga, mindfulness, and social justice. His mission is to rewrite the narrative around wellness and healing. He believes that Yoga is a practice of activism. By allowing oneself to engage in practices and techniques of self awareness, self regulation, and self care, it awakens the desire to make the world a better place than you found it.

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Kristina Lopez (she/they) is a community builder dedicated to creating holistic change in the world. Her practice is informed by an intersectional lens dedicated to collective liberation. She intertwines Buddhist philosophy with contemporary theories of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and sex positivity in her work as an artist, meditation guide, and community deathcare advocate. She is a second-generation Caribbean American born and raised on Lenape land in NYC. As a Founding Teacher with GaneshSpace, she believes that mindfulness and activism are both necessary on our paths to freedom.

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Vuzmal Sharma (they/she) Hi! My name is Vuzmal Sharma, but most folks call me Meesha. My name Vuzmal means lightning in Kashmiri, the land of my maternal lineage. Meesha is a pet name I was given at birth. Sharma comes from my Punjabi father’s lineage. I am the first of my family to be born outside of South Asia. I believe all people are ever-evolving, shape-shifting multi-dimensional entities, so it’s hard to encapsulate who I am in a few sentences. However, the key words that come to mind right now are: writer, disruptor, yoga sadhaka and guide, community space holder, queer trans lover, and creatrix. My passion lies in alchemizing our sacred and inherent creative energy with the indigenous medicine of yoga to dismantle harmful systems within and without, while co-weaving new ways of being with my peers and allies. I am the founder of a virtual community called Alchemystic Studio (www.alchemysticstudio.com) where we come together to do the work of healing and change-making in a joyful and supportive way. It is an honor to be a part of this incredible collective. May we all have access to liberation. IG: @alchemystic_studio

Daniel Sannito

Daniel Sannito (they/them/theirs) moves through this world as a trans, non-binary educator, writer, and facilitator of yoga asana and meditation. Daniel shares offerings inspired by over ten years of personal practice and study in various traditions and lineages. They are a founding collaborator of the Trans Yoga Project, a writer and consultant with Chopra, and a collaborating teacher with Love Your Brain. They dedicate their voice to creating affirming space for all humans to explore and discover connection with their own hearts in the ways that serve them best. Stay connected with Daniel on Instagram: @danielsannito_  or visit their website at danielsannito.com to learn more about them and their offerings.

Our Board

We’re so lucky to be supported by an incredible, compassionate board.

Kerri Ann Wright

Kerri-Ann Wright (she/her)

Board Lead

Liz Getman (she/her)

Finance/Fundraising Lead

Jess Zayas Rivera

Jessie Anne Zayas (she/her)

Marketing/Comms Lead

Abeer Naqvi

Abeer Naqvi (she/her)

Treasurer


Sara Friedman (she/her)

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.” — Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

STAY CONNECTED

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DONATE

At GaneshSpace, we teach you how to take your practice and turn it into actionable mindfulness. Your financial contribution is not just a donation. It supports our community. It supports your practice. And it supports the world around us. Please consider making a contribution and adding us to any corporate giving program. Our EIN number is 87-1472371. All donations are tax-deductible.