tara teng, healer, pageant queen, sexual warrior, vancouver, bc, portfolioyvr, author, model, yvr

Tara Teng on Dismantling Systems of Harm Through Somatic Coaching, Community, and Advocacy

Tara Teng (she/her) is an Embodiment Coach working at the intersection of spirituality and sexuality. She helps people find their way back to their bodies — overcoming shame, healing trauma, and dismantling purity culture in alignment with their own values and beliefs, so they can build a healthy sexual ethic and thrive in freedom and wholeness.

Beyond her coaching practice, Tara hosts women’s circles, workshops, online classes, and retreats on embodiment, justice, sexuality, and relationships. Her debut book, Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other and the Earth, was published in June 2023 by Broadleaf Books and Dundurn Press, and is available in print, e-book, and audiobook everywhere books are sold.

Tara has spent over a decade advancing the socio-economic status of women, working to diminish sexual violence and end human trafficking. Her advocacy has helped pass new laws in Canada protecting victims of trafficking and established Canada’s first Municipal Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking.

A TEDx Speaker and former Miss Canada, Tara was named Canada’s Woman of the Year in 2011, recognized as one of the Globe and Mail’s Top 25 Most Transformational Canadians, and awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her human rights work.

tara teng, healer, pageant queen, sexual warrior, vancouver, bc, portfolioyvr, author, model, yvr

COMPANY BIO

Tara Teng’s practice is rooted in somatic healing, working primarily with individuals healing from religious trauma, purity culture, and sexual trauma. Drawing on somatic therapy, she helps clients rebuild their connection to their bodies, reclaim trust in their own intuition, and develop a sense of safety in their nervous systems — particularly those deconstructing from high-control religion. The sexuality piece is central to this work: helping clients return to a sexual expression that is authentically their own, after years of being told their bodies do not belong to them, is work that is both profound and transformative. Tara also works with men navigating deconstruction, supporting them in embodying a masculine identity and sexuality that feels honest, healthy, and shame-free.

Beyond one-on-one coaching, Tara is a community organizer facilitating monthly Reclamation Women’s Circles, co-founder and art curator of Reclaiming Art — an artist collective using creativity as a pathway to healing and social change — and the creator of Not Bible Camp, a consent-based, trauma-informed summer camp experience for ex-evangelicals and friends seeking the joy and nostalgia of camp without the religious baggage.

Everything she builds is grounded in a single conviction: that confronting what is wrong in the world must be matched equally by multiplying what is right.

tara teng, healer, pageant queen, sexual warrior, vancouver, bc, portfolioyvr, author, model, yvr

IN HER WORDS

“The morning after winning Miss BC in 2010, I woke up and noticed something had shifted — not in me, but in the room. Nothing about who I was had changed overnight, but suddenly people were listening differently. A crown had arrived, and with it, a platform. I have spent every year since asking what to do with it.

The answer came quickly and without ambiguity. A neighbour from my community in Langley had been trafficked. When I learned what had happened, I could not look away. That was the spark — not a business plan, not a market opportunity, but a gap in the system that was leaving people vulnerable to harm, and a refusal to pretend I had not seen it. That refusal launched a career focused on ending violence against women and sexual abuse that continues to define everything I build.

ACTIVISM AS ARCHITECTURE

All of my work begins in activism. Give me a microphone and it will become a protest or a rally in some form. My art shows, my community organizing, my writing — all of it is an act of protest and a prayer to reimagine the world in a more humane way.

My early years were focused on human trafficking and violence against women. Over time, that lens widened to encompass the full architecture of systemic harm — the interconnected forces of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism that perpetuate violence, scarcity, and the vulnerability that creates these crises in the first place. Working closely with the local Indigenous community and as part of the team at Decolonial Clothing — an Indigenous activism movement and social enterprise based in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown — has deepened my understanding profoundly, while also reconnecting me to my own mixed Asian and second-generation immigrant roots. I am a student of the women’s liberation movement, LGBTQIA2S+ rights, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, Land Back, Stop Asian Hate, and Me Too. Indigenous elders and the wisdom of the ecosystem around me have been among my most important teachers.

tara teng, healer, pageant queen, sexual warrior, vancouver, bc, portfolioyvr, author, model, yvr

LEARNING TO BUILD IN COMMUNITY

My first entrepreneurial project outside of activism and public speaking was Justly Market, an online ethical marketplace I launched in 2017 with the goal of creating a genuine alternative to platforms like Amazon. It was ambitious, necessary, and ultimately ahead of its time. Ethical sourcing is always more expensive than cheap, inhumanely produced goods, and the logistics of shipping, sourcing, and inventory proved more complex than the market was ready to absorb. My business partner stepped down shortly after launch due to family circumstances, and I found myself building alone — which, as I would come to understand more clearly, is simply not how I work best. I closed Justly Market shortly before the pandemic in 2020, carried the lessons forward, and did not look back.

What that experience clarified was fundamental: I am a community builder, not a solo operator. Every venture that has thrived since has been built on partnership, collaboration, and shared ownership of the work. I run my business like a matriarchal community — with sliding scale offerings, work-trade exchanges, and teams built on genuine partnership rather than extraction. That model is not just more aligned with my values. It is more effective, more sustainable, and considerably more joyful. As a late-diagnosed ADHD person, finding neurofriendly ways of getting things done has been equally transformative. Both realizations changed everything.

THE WORK THAT GREW

In 2019, I went deep into researching the ways women have historically been made to feel shame about their bodies — and specifically, about menstruation. After sharing that research publicly, I hosted a gathering to explore the reclamation of it all. Those gatherings became Reclamation Women’s Circles, a monthly sell-out event that has been running consistently in person since April 2024, with an online chapter through the pandemic years.

That same year, somatic coaching found me rather than the other way around. After leaving the high-control religion I was raised in, I spent significant time in therapy, disentangling myself from harmful teachings and discovering somatic therapy as a modality for healing. I trained as a Somatic Sex Coach and never advertised my services. People simply began arriving, asking for support. Since then I have worked with hundreds of clients around the world as they heal from trauma and reconnect to their bodies and sexuality.

In January 2020, a literary agent in the United States approached me about writing a book. From 2020 to 2022 I wrote Your Body is a Revolution — an exploration of how trauma is perpetuated by systems of oppression, and all the ways we can be liberated from it. Published in June 2023 by Broadleaf Books and Dundurn Press, it has since been translated into Portuguese for a Brazilian edition. I narrated the audio version myself, and it is available everywhere books are sold.

Reclaiming Arts launched in May 2025, born out of a conversation at one of my women’s circles. The goal was to create space for artists to share meaningful work rooted in healing and human experience. We have since built workshops, retreats, and large artist showcases that take place twice a year. My newest venture, Not Bible Camp, arrives this summer in Fort Langley — a consent-based, trauma-informed, community-centered summer camp experience that reclaims the fun, whimsy, and nostalgia of camp, without the religious trauma.

THE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM

The biggest shifts in my thinking have come not from mentors in the traditional sense, but from movements and communities that challenged me to keep growing. I am a student of every liberation movement I have been part of, and I have been humbled repeatedly by how much I did not know and continue to learn.

My partners and collaborators are the architecture of everything I build. Oldhand Coffee hosts my women’s circles and art shows. Deb Jarvis is the co-founder of Reclaiming Art. Decolonial Clothing, Broadleaf Books, Dundurn Press, and The Bindery Agency have each been essential to bringing different dimensions of this work into the world. These are not vendors or sponsors. They are co-creators.

THE SKILL OF NOTICING

The best advice I can offer is simple, and it is the foundation of everything I have built: develop the skill of noticing. Noticing always leads to magic.

When you are present in your body and able to notice the world around you, you will find the magic you seek. You will see the people who need support. You will feel the gaps that the system has left open. And with that information, you can create something special that the world genuinely needs — not something optimized for a market, but something called into existence by paying attention.

Every project I have built began with noticing. A neighbour who needed protection. Women carrying shame about their own bodies. Artists who needed a room to share their work. A community that needed a summer camp without the trauma. None of it began with a strategy. All of it began with presence.

tara teng, healer, pageant queen, sexual warrior, vancouver, bc, portfolioyvr, author, model, yvr

THE LEGACY BEING BUILT

My Chinese name is Oi Kwan. It means loves groups of people — loves community. That is the legacy I am building toward, and it is the most honest description of everything I do.

I want people to feel seen, feel supported, and a little less alone because of this work. I want to watch systems of oppression fall as we reclaim what it means to be human — from the forces of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism that have for too long defined the terms of our existence. I want us to remember that we belong together.

The next steps are clear. Reclaiming Arts is ready to grow into a registered society, which would open access to donations, grants, and financial support to widen the work. My next book is ready to be written — a love letter to survivors, exploring the reclamation of vibrant, embodied sexuality after trauma.

The legacy I hope to leave is not measured in revenue or reach. It is measured in how many people felt less alone, how many bodies were returned to themselves, and how many communities remembered what it means to be human together. That is the work. That is all of it.”

Author Profile

Helen Siwak, Collaborator: This story is created in collaboration between Helen Siwak and the featured subject. As the founder and publisher of Portfolio.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine, Helen works closely with entrepreneurs to share their paths of innovation, resilience, and growth. Each story in this series is co-developed through interviews and first-person insights, blending authentic voices with Helen’s editorial expertise to highlight the remarkable individuals shaping British Columbia’s business landscape.