Dana Jain

Dana Jain (she/they) MFA, RYT, RSME is a writer, educator, and administrator with over 20 years of experience working within complex social environments, including K-12 schools, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and community-based settings. Her career has focused on teaching and mentoring students, training faculty and staff, and collaborating with partners to promote innovation, inclusion, and access to equitable and impactful community and workplace development. She ventures to bring her whole self, warts and all, with dignity, respect, and joy to meet students and colleagues where they are; nurture trust, resilience and vulnerability; and promote supportive relationships, environments, and systems that liberate and elevate the best in each person and in society as a whole.

Dana has published and performed widely, including reading poetry on city buses. Her first book, Paradise, or the Part That Dies, (she publishes as Dana Killmeyer) is a semi-autobiographical novella stemming from her experience volunteering on an organic farm in southern Florida. Her second book, Pendulums of Euphoria, is a collection of poetry. She is also the founder of Sacred Oak Healing Arts (SOHA), which aims to help people experiencing pain, stress, or disconnection to develop a sense of calm, confidence, and well-being through activities that engage the whole person–body, mind, and soul–such as yoga, storytelling, cooking, and gardening. Cultivating communities of learning and a relationship to one’s feeling-thinking body is the heart of Dana’s philosophy and work. She believes that opening ourselves to diversity of thought and being and attending to our bodies is imperative to educating the mind and, ultimately, advancing systems that are socially just, anti-oppressive, and transformative. 

When Dana is not working or writing, she enjoys gardening; foraging for wild, edible, and medicinal mushrooms and plants; cooking simple, flavorful food; and promoting healthy ecosystems, watersheds, and communities.