Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.
Nicole Halpern lives and works at the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, an organization/community dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. She teaches naked yoga, regular yoga, and a class called “The Man Course.” I have seen her naked.
SFBG: So what’s your story? How did you find yourself working at One Taste as a naked yoga instructor?
Nicole Halpern: Well, all my life I’ve had these experiences where I would feel really really connected to everything -to all the people and everything around — and then I just hit a point in my life where I realized I wanted more.
SFBG: Um, what exactly do you mean by that?
Halpern: I just wanted more connection to everything and I kept trying to find it in different ways, but it wasn’t until I moved to One Taste that I finally found it.
SFBG: OK … so where are you from?
Halpern: I grew up in Manhattan. I went to high school in Westchester and lived in a traditional family. It was really traditional. I mean, I went to college. I worked at ABC news for 2.5 years. I worked in marketing. I worked in advertising. I have a very traditional background. But I quit my job in 2000 to travel because I had this deep desire to see more than just the east coast of the United States.
SFBG: Cool. Where did you go?
Halpern: Oh, I went on a long backpacking trip through Nepal, and when I came back I just knew my life had to be different. I couldn’t go back to the way I was before. Then I thought traveling was my purpose, but then I came here and realized my purpose was to teach classes around sex. I want to teach people how to have the life that they want, the sex that they want, and to feel freedom in who they are.
SFBG: So how did you find this place? Was sex the main attraction?