RS: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is the accessibility of yoga. It’s become an industry and pastime that has an image attached to it that tends to appeal mostly to certain demographics, yet at its heart it’s a practice that could be beneficial to everyone. Beyond all the products attached to it, which really aren’t necessary to own in order to practice, I think that most teachers and studio owners want to make classes appealing and available to everyone without veering too far away from the core principles of yoga philosophy. How do you as a studio owner and proponent of community priced yoga address that?

MS: I kind of see the yoga industry as a reflection of everything else that is going on in society. A few years ago when there was a boom in real estate and the financial industry and everything was becoming commercially marketed, yoga was one of those things. All of a sudden it just exploded and became very popular and there was a lot of money to be made. So the idea of yoga became something that was packaged and marketed and sold to the public in a way that happened to be fairly expensive…

People came to expect certain things in yoga studios; they wanted bamboo floors, a giant buddha statue, a sauna, showers, tea…  And that’s all great. It’s amazing to walk in to your yoga studio and feel like you’re on retreat or something, but then essentially the studio is pricing for a lot more than just the classes, and that price tag will exclude a lot of the community and in some ways I think the image of it all moves away from the essential purpose of the practice in the first place. I had dreamed of opening a low-cost studio for years, sans all the marketability and the stuff that came with it.

My original intention was to open a studio in Baltimore, or on the east coast in more needy, more impoverished cities and to make it accessible to people of color, transgendered people, spanish-speaking communities and the segments of the society that definitely were not being served by the popular model of yoga studios at that time. I carried around that vision for years and I asked people to participate with me and lots of people were supportive but no one really wanted to get into it. Then I did my teacher training at Yoga Pearl and when I finished I just didn’t know where I wanted to be or where I wanted to teach. I personally have felt like an outsider in many studios for whatever reason, I’ve had a pretty colorful past… And so I carried that with me and I never quite felt a sense of belonging, but I was looking for it.

One day I was walking along with a friend and I said “I’m just gonna do it, I’m just going to open a studio.” I found a space on Alberta (street) and luckily the landlord was a hippy who didn’t care if I didn’t know a thing about business, and didn’t make me pay a security deposit and just let me move in, and that’s how we came to be. I mean I knew nothing about making it work, I just knew what I wanted to charge and who I wanted to serve and I was extraordinarily idealistic, I thought everyone was going to really appreciate what I was doing, even the other yoga studios I thought would really appreciate it, and then I came to realize that was not the case, because it’s threatening. You know other studios have worked really hard to build their client base and then I came in offering yoga at half their price, and there was this fear that I would take the students. But actually that didn’t happen and my original intention did happen- the people that previously were unable to take classes came, there were artists and musicians and minorities and all these people who also hadn’t felt like they belonged in other studios and that’s not to say that’s right or wrong, but that’s just the way it was… and we’ve created our own little space and now there are lots of people who say “I feel like this is home for me, I really feel like I belong here. I can walk in here and feel like this is my place.” so I’ve done my purpose i guess.

RS: How did you start to practice yoga?

MS: I had spent most of my twenties severely depressed and extraordinarily angry and I started practicing because my friend who had been struggling with an addiction for a long time had gone to a retreat and had learned some yoga. She came back and she told me about it and kept saying “You should really do this.” Finally I found this $5 drop-in studio and I started going there. I was naturally flexible and I found it really easy right away so when I began I was very competitive with myself, and for maybe the first three years I was pretty much focused on the poses and trying to perfect them.

After I began to practice I noticed that I wasn’t as reactive to things, I wasn’t as depressed or having as many severe depressive episodes and I felt like I could get some distance between my myself and what was going on for me emotionally. It just kind of lessoned what was going on at that time which was a lot of depression, anxiety… It wasn’t all better, but it was definitely more manageable than it had been before and it wasn’t consuming me anymore. For the first few years I was just there, or I thought I was just there to exercise. I really wasn’t even doing anything else at the time, I wasn’t studying philosophy or meditating. I don’t think I even understood the breathing for a few years, I was just doing the asana and I was there for exercise and to perfect poses. But the other benefits came anyway and I remember that when I started doing it all the time I started telling everyone about it. It was such a grounding influence in my life.

Three years later I moved to Portland I was exposed to a lot of different teachers and teaching styles, but even before that that I was noticing other kinds of changes. I was more capable of dealing with stress and I became calmer, less angry and less depressed. None of that happened because I was making any attempt to do any of it, it just came from practicing.

RS: How has being a teacher or a studio owner affected your practice?

MS: Simply studying so much and taking a path that requires so much self-study has really transformed the way I practice and teach. Having the opportunity to look at students bodies and to observe them… You know sometimes there are have things about ourselves that we have a hard time admitting or seeing, but when we see it in someone else then we can say, “Hey wait a second, that feels really familiar, I can relate to that.” And so we learn a lot about ourselves watching other people. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my practice from my students.
Being a studio owner has been interesting in that I have learned what I value in teachers and what I admire, and I have adopted a lot of that in my own practice.

RS: What about the aspect of karma yoga (selfless service), do you feel that there is an element of that with the studio?

MS: Oh yeah! I didn’t get paid for a year and a half! and even now we’re not really bringing that much in. But I’m thrilled every day that we’re doing it. I’m so happy to be in this space, I’m so happy to feel like I’ve found some balance between financially supporting myself and staying true to my original intention and I feel like I’ve stayed on track and it’s been amazing. I feel really lucky.

RS: What was your vision for the future of People’s Yoga?

MS: I really like what we’re doing now! I would eventually like to be able to offer a teacher training at lower cost. I would really like to have guest teachers come in and offer their time and do workshops that are also at a lower cost. But for the time being I really just like what we’re doing and I just want it be sustainable and what will come will come and I’ll know it when it meets me.

RS: What is your vision for the future of community yoga studios in general?

MS: It’s interesting because I get contacted all the time now from people starting studios. When we started, I searched the internet and I searched all over to find other studios that were doing similar things and found like, four. I mean, it was really slim pickings. I had one woman in Arizona from Tuscan Yoga who kind of mentored me through the process and since then I’ve had all these people contacting me from all over the country and asking me to mentor them, so it seems to be growing and everybody wants to know ‘how to do it’.

I don’t really know how… I mean, I think it’s got to be unique to each place. But I think we’re seeing a movement away from a mass commercialization of yoga and I think that in the future there’s going to be a seesawing where people will be trying to find their place, their financial footing, and trying to figure out how to stay alive as a business and still stay in-line with the values that yoga imparts. I think it will all wash out in a few years and we’ll find a middle ground, but I’m not really sure what that looks like yet.

I think that everyone who’s doing the community yoga right now is trying different things and eventually they’ll settle on a model that works. In the meantime there are some successes and some failures, some studios do donation or they do $6, $8 or $10 drop-ins or scholarships. Everyone is doing different things and we’ll find what works best eventually. At The Peoples Yoga our price was originally $6, then I went to sliding-scale ($6-$8), now it’s $8 to drop in, but people can become members for $55 a month and come as much as they want or we do discounted class cards if people buy 5 or 10 classes at a time, and we have scholarships available for people who can’t afford those options.

RS: Have you had that many people apply for scholarships?

MS: We have some regular students that we support every month through scholarship and trade. I probably give out five or six scholarships a month. I haven’t had to turn anybody away, which is great, and everyone that has gotten one has used it.

RS: What is entailed in a scholarship? And what do you trade?

MS: They’re awarded on basis of need. Pretty much they’ll get $40-$50 and they can choose to purchase a 10-class card with that or an unlimited monthly membership. So if they purchase an unlimited monthly then it will cost them $5. If they don’t come as often and then want a 10-class card then it’s $20. So they get that option and they’ll get that credit for every month that they apply for it.

Pretty much all the services that we need that we can trade, we trade; our construction, web design, photography… You name it, I’ll trade it! That means it takes months to get things done, but it does get done!  And since we’re doing yoga then we’re also practicing patience and contentment while we wait!

The People’s Yoga is located at 3016 NE Killingsworth St. in Portland, OR
All classes are $8. Scholarships are available.

The yoga industry is booming. In 2009 Americans spent an estimated $5.7 Billion on yoga and yoga related products like clothes, DVDs and books, that’s a figure that’s up 87% from 2004. 72% of those spending are women, 71% are college educated and 44% have household incomes of $75,000 or more. (From the “Yoga in America” Survey conducted by Harris Interactive Service Bureau on behalf of Yoga Journal)

Toronto yogahappening yogis making crow not war

Community yoga is booming! Free, by-donation and cheap classes are making the way into the schedules of most yoga studios, if not making up the entire schedule of many studios.

There’s a lot of bad news these days that we are collectively trying to come to terms with and figure out how to live with and live better so we don’t continue to cause so many disasters (oy humanity… why?), and we as a species and as residents of Planet Earth need contemplative practices more than ever.

So that’s why I’m just so pleased to see trends like community yoga (still missing a wiki entry, if any of you want to get on that… but hereby defined as yoga classes for the community at community prices, sliding scale from free to by donation to under $10) and yogahappenings growing and so quickly becoming important parts of many peoples practice.

Here in Portland I’ve started a site for a schedule of community classes around town (soon to also include free and by-donation meditation classes), and there are similar schedules for the Bay Area, and Chicago that I’ve found, and I’m sure many other places too. It’s my hope that maybe we can all link up and form a nation-wide (world-wide?) network for community yoga. That’s union!

Yoga happening started happening in Toronto, and is now happening in Vancouver, New York City and Portland, OR.

Yogahappening creates yoga events in public spaces: in the park, at a gallery, in the mountains, by the sea, the forest, the lake. Yogahappening asks you to pause in your yoga routine and consider the spontaneity of practice somewhere other than where you’re used to, without knowing what style, what teacher, what format your experience will be. Yogahappenings might include an aprés-yoga moment for connection like a picnic or a bikeride, or perhaps there will be a live musician to play for your practice or a storyteller to guide you into savasana dreams.

Yogahappenings are an invitation for experienced practitioners and beginners alike to come to their practice with fresh eyes and an open mind to whatever happens to be on the yogahappening menu that day. Participants find out 24 hours in advance of an event, where and when, but the teacher and style remain a mystery until the event. So a dedicated Ashtangi might discover the joy of Yin while someone else who thought yoga was easy and boring might find that Vinyasa is just the challenge they’ve been looking for.

Yogahappenings are the chance you’ve been waiting for to talk to the person on the mat next to you and encourage positive, loving and fun interactions that strengthen the yoga community as well as the larger community.

To find out more about yogahappening you can visit their site and blog, and sign up for updates and announcements via Facebook, Twitter or RSS from the Portland, Toronto, Vancouver and New York.

See you there!

One of the places I enjoyed my time away from the computer the most was in the south island of New Zealand in Golden Bay where I stayed at an intentional community/ eco village called Tui.

The Tui Community and Land Trust began in 1984 when a group of like-minded individuals decided to buy over 100 acres of land to start an intentional community. In the last 30 odd years Tui has gone through various incarnations and approaches towards a vision of intentional community and has quite successfully blossomed into a village in which 30-40 adults and children live gently upon some of the most gorgeous land I’ve ever seen. Many of the Tui Community residents are independently employed outside of the community in neighboring towns, a fair amount are employed by the community’s cottage industry, Tui Balmes and Waxes and a few more are kept busy running young men’s and women’s rites of passage programs, respectively, Tracks and Tides.

I traveled to NZ as the guest and assistant for my dear friend and mentor Melissa Michaels who was invited to Tui (with myself, another assistant and her two daughters in tow) to share her work with the New Zealand Community. Melissa runs a rites of passage program called “Surfing The Creative” which utilizes movement, dance, music, art-making, performance, council, and a whole lot of other things to facilitate dynamic leadership and community building. Learn more about her Colorado-based workshops and classes and her international program.

In Tui we were welcomed into the fabulously imaginative home of Suzi and Jim, two long-standing residents of the village. Suzi is a leader and founder of Tides, a rites of passage program for young women, and Jim is the leader and found of Tracks, the young men’s rites of passage program. Two of my friends and other collaborators of Melissa have traveled to Tui to take part in the leadership of these programs. Are you skilled or do you want to learn more about youth leadership and rites of passage? This would be a place to come and learn about it!

Another opportunity to travel to Tui is to go and WWOOF. Willing Workers On Organic Farms is a worldwide network of willing and able people who exchange labor for room and board on organic farms. The terms are negotiated personally, there is generally no monetary exchange, and traveling and working is one of the best ways to get to know a community and land.

On the drive from Nelson to Golden Bay- overlooking the valley.

From the vantage of Suzi and Jim’s balcony

Tui community garden

Tui community dinner

Meagan Chandler, singer, artist, and sister traveler relaxing in the evening warmth

The view of Suzi and Jim’s house from the driveway

Suzi and Jim in their kitchen with grandson Koa

Koa and his dad Jay, preparing for our last supper together

Meagan on the rocks by the estuary

Suzi and Jim’s chimney stack!

More pictures from the rest of the trip (Berkeley, L.A., Sydney) coming soon!

Interview with Ryan Leier- Founder of Yoga For Youth and ONE Yoga Saskatoon

RS: Can you tell me about Yoga For Youth? What is it and what do you do?

RL: We’re a non profit organization made up of a group of yoga teachers and what we’re doing is taking yoga to the schools and communities through physical education classes in the public schools, and in after-school programs or though community centers. Our focus is on inner city youth, kids who wouldn’t otherwise have access to yoga classes. For the last year we’ve been working on teaching the inner city kids and then bringing them with us to different parts of town to teach and demonstrate to the kids at other schools.

RS: How many locations are you in right now?

RL: About 20

RS: Are they mostly public schools?

RL: The Catholic schools have been trying to bring us in and they’re really open to what we’re offering. It’s interesting, the Catholic schools want the whole tradition. They want to know the philosophy, the spiritual aspects and the moral codes. I was really surprised in a good way at how open they were because some of the public schools we’re in just want us to come and teach ‘special’ phys. ed. classes, and teach them fitness yoga. Yesterday I went into the Catholic school and the principle was doing an announcement right before the class and what he was talking about was the courage of Jesus and Martin Luther King to be non-violent. It was Ahimsa. It was great, it matched exactly what I wanted to talk to the kids about; being able to use the poses to develop courage so they could speak for themselves and not follow peer pressure

RS: It sounds like Yoga For Youth is sharing a lot more than just the physical practice of asana with these kids?

RL: Definitely, that’s what our intention is.

RS: Do you find that the kids you’re working with are receptive to the teachings? Are they more or less receptive to the asana compared to the philosophy? Where is their interest?

RL: For some of the kids something has definitely sparked, they know that the yoga practice can take them to a new place. We have some kids who are coming from lots of drug use. We have two girls who are from one of the inner city high schools who are starting to come to the studio now on their own, rather than going out and getting high… They both had serious drug use problems. A few of the kids are embracing it as a thing that has the potential to really change their lives in terms of how they behave and respond to their world. Then there’s another group that’s come in from the sports teams that are coming in to use yoga to get fit and to get them into better shape and prevent injuries. So it’s reaching the kids on different levels and I think that for the most part they’re receptive to what yoga is in its entirety, beyond just the physical practice.

RS: What is the average age of the kids that you’re teaching?

RL: Anywhere from 5 years old to 25 years old… I had a grade 2 kid the other day… I always ask the kids what they think that yoga is, and they say things like “strength” or  “peacefulness“, and one little girl put up her hand and said “Yoga is the art of relaxation.” They’re so smart!

RS: How did Yoga For Youth begin?

RL: A few years ago I was talking to the man who was my religious studies professor in college, he’s a Tibetan Buddhist who’s the head of the department for religious studies here at the university. I was telling him about my teacher Father Joe Pereira who does work with HIV and AIDS and drugs and alcohol addiction recovery in India, (The Kripa Foundation has over 50 locations worldwide. It was started by Fr. Joe and supported by Mother Theresa. Visit FR. Joe’s site here and learn more about his project here.) and I was telling my prof, Dr. Jay that I wanted to dedicate myself to serving Fr. Joe’s mission. Dr. Jay said, “Well, what experience do you have with working with drugs and alcohol?” and I said,

“None.”

“What about HIV and AIDS?”

“None.”

He said, “Well you’ve trained to be a teacher and you’re working to coach kids in basketball… Have you ever thought about serving yoga to the kids before they go through all the things like addiction and health problems and using yoga to reach them first?”

And I realized that’s where my strength was so I decided to put together this foundation. It’s been growing over the past few years, and hopefully it will continue to grow.

(Fr. Joe Pereira)

RS: Is Yoga For Youth still affiliated with Kripa and Fr. Joe?

RL: He supports it. It’s not really affiliated but he’s given me his blessing to teach as many kids and train as many teachers as I can.

RS: How many teachers do you have working with you right now?

RL: We have 8.

RS: Are they all teachers who have been your long-time students? Did you train all of them?

RL: Most of them have been my students for a long time or I’ve trained them. I want to keep it fairly consistent right now in terms of the kinds of things we’re teaching and the style of yoga.

RS: You began offering a teacher training last year, can you speak a little about it?

RL: I believe teaching yoga is something that really comes through if you have a practice. Someone who teaches, I think, really needs to have a daily practice or the integrity of the teachings doesn’t really translate. At the training we try to teach people how to practice yoga in their daily life beyond just the asana, beyond the 60 minutes or 90 minutes in a class, but in all other aspects of what they do and how they live.

This past year it was a ONE Yoga training and Yoga For Youth training, so anyone that did it could teach Yoga For Youth… In the future the training will be specific, either ONE Yoga or Yoga For Youth. Right now I’m working on our mission statement and developing an 8-week program with different sequences and a class every day with a different focus.

RS: What do you envision as the future of Yoga For Youth?

RL: We were working towards actually getting it into the provincial or at least city-wide curriculum, and I found it’s really difficult. Now we’re looking at getting it into more community type programs like after-school groups where the kids and parents can come and practice. In the inner city schools the thing is that you need to be there right after school gets out, otherwise it’s really unlikely that the kids are going to be able to find a way to come back for the group.

I would love to see it in the curriculum in Saskatoon and maybe even across Canada in different cities. I would love it if we could work with a behavioral specialist who would come in and research what the affects of yoga are on the kids. I think that if we could convince people of the value, we could make it a part of the school curriculum. Ideally I would love to see yoga be a part of every kids school day, 5 minutes of meditation and 15 minutes of poses. It would change the schools and the people completely.

RS: What is it about a yoga practice that’s different from sports or theater or other hobbies? What about yoga would help someone be more aware and more loving or encourage those traits?

RL: Yoga gives people the tools that they need to become comfortable in their own skin and to make good, conscious choices rather than following peer pressure or rather than following habitual ways or cultural standards that aren’t always kind, loving and truthful. I think that yoga helps people to connect with their personal power and their ability to love themselves and others.

Yoga also brings people to honor their bodies. In class we encourage them to come from their hearts and their feelings and intuition rather than doing poses because they’re competitive or because they think everyone else is doing it. It makes them mindful of their actions, their words, their thoughts and it empowers them to learn what they can do and what they can go through. We challenge people in yoga classes, we put them into situations on the mat that are really hard and we make them stay in it and find comfort and just breathe through it even when things get tough. I think that the longer someone can stay in a pose that’s safe, but is challenging and uncomfortable… That learning to work through their physical challenges and discomfort makes them more tolerant and loving people who are accepting of others and accepting of life.

RS: Where do you get your financial support? Do you receive any government funding through the schools?

RL: We receive individual donations and we do fundraiser/karma classes to buy mats and pay teachers.  We’re definitely on the lookout for a mat company to sponsor us if you know of any!

It’s been difficult to get funding through the schools because they have to be a bit wary of religious affiliations, or I guess, what can be seen as religious affiliation. I talked to a woman with the school board yesterday and the first thing she brought up was that some of the parents don’t like yoga being taught in schools because they think it’s religious.

RS: Other than some parents who are concerned about potential religious conflicts, how has the response been from the other parents, kids and teachers? Does it seem like there is some kind of general attitude or response to your program so far?

RL: For the most part, everyone really loves it and they appreciate it and they want more of it. The more time we spend in one school, the more the parents and the teachers see what the possible benefits of yoga are and what yoga can do for them and the kids as human beings. Beyond building strength or flexibility, the teachers notice that the kids are calmer and more focused. The teachers see them actually using some of the principles of yoga like kindness, truthfulness, and non-stealing.

RS: Can you say a little about the perception that yoga is a religion? How do you teach mindfulness and spirituality without teaching religion, or do you? Is that a part of your program?

RL: We talk about things a bit differently. We don’t talk about God but sometimes in Savasana we say things like “Let that force that is breathing you… Whatever you think it is… Let it take care of you and relax with it.” We talk about surrendering and letting to the earth and to the sky like with the native spirituality. Sometimes we use language like soul or spirit, but if we do use that language or if we talk about Jesus or the Buddha, we make sure to say that it’s just one way of describing things. We use a lot of language like joining with your highest self or conscience, and what we’re talking about is the power of love. I guess we use the word love interchangeably with god.

The inner cities have lots of Native American kids whose tradition has really been suppressed and dishonored in Canada so we often incorporate certain aspects of their tradition, like the elements, the earth, sky, fire and water into our teachings. And at the end of the class when we say Namaste we also say words from Crazy Horse, “I salute the light within your eyes where the universe dwells. For when you are at that place within you and I am at that place within me we shall be one.”

We like to honor those teachings of the Mother Earth and the Father Sky. We’re on sacred land, here on Earth, and also as our bodies and in our minds we’re sacred.

What we’re teaching is not religious. We’re not asking them to be any certain way. We’re empowering the kids to really be themselves and we’re basically teaching them that at the core of who they are, they’re no better, no worse, no different than anyone else, there’s no superiority and no inferiority. We say things like “Have a proud heart and a humble chin”. What this program is doing for these kids is uplifting the kids that really need to be uplifted who are shy, insecure and maybe unhealthy. And it’s helping to humble the kids that have learned to bully or look down on their peers. The program works to bring young people into their center where they really are perfect and there’s nothing wrong with them and there’s nothing to prove. We’re trying to teach them to connect to that part of themselves. I think that’s really the heart of what yoga is.

Click here to view the embedded video.

RS: What inspires you most, what motivates you to do what you do?

RL: Just looking in these kids eyes when they’re connecting to their source. What inspires me is these kids that are just shining and to be able to help them keep that shine and make it stronger. If we go to one school with 300 kids and 1 kid ‘gets it’. If just one kid understands the simple teachings of yoga it could have a huge impact on their whole life. If one kid came and said “Oh wow! That was really cool, maybe when I get older I’ll go and study that.” Or like a lot of these kids that we’re teaching now, maybe they’ll be inspired to become yoga teachers and teach their peers and stay on the path towards a peaceful and mindful life. I think that’s worth all of the time and effort that we put in.

RS: If you could design a t-shirt what would it say?

RL: LOVE!

But I also like Muhammad Ali’s poem that just says, “Me, We.” Because we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not or realize it or not, we’re all one, we’re all here on Earth together and we have to help each other out.

(Feed The Yogi will being selling Yoga For Youth T-shirts on the site in the next few months. Keep an eye out for them, all proceeds go to YFY)

Ryan and his lovely daughter and teaching assistant, Kiyah

Oooh! Goldmine!!

I love it when I find amazing web resources like iHanuman. Hanuman the monkey-faced god of the Hindu tradition is considered to be a symbol of Bhakti (devotion) and love. As one incarnation of Lord Shiva, Hanuman represents good fortune and benevolence. iHanuman pays tribute to the namesake as an online community of yoga teachers who are dedicated to serving the yoga community through “karma” events (yoga events to raise money for certain causes), with an extensive digital library where you can find everything from a led yoga class to talks on yoga and medicine to audio recordings of Hanuman stories.

iHanuman also features webhosting for teachers, an online shop and other offerings.

This is definitely a resource to share and grow, please encourage your yoga teacher friends and studios to get involved.

Yoga Hope is a non-profit yoga outreach program based in western Massachusetts bringing the practice of yoga and meditation to underserved women; women who have been incarcerated, are undergoing addiction treatment and rehabilitation,  living on the streets, battered women and women transitioning from hospital treatment for disordered eating.

Founded by Sue Jones, the program consists of volunteer teachers who offer their time and energy to teach classes and offer a scholarship program and teacher training to participants of the outreach program.

Here’s a video of Yoga Hope at work. Visit their site to learn more or get involved.

Shanti Uganda is a project that I am seriously excited about! The women that started this project are deeply committed to the vision of yoga as a healing tool and are doing wonderful work to spread the love and peace (shanti) of the practice. If you happen to be here in the Portland area I currently teach a weekly class to raise money for the project and I will be traveling to Uganda this winter to volunteer with the project for a few months. Class schedule here.

(Excerpt from site)
The Shanti Uganda Society began with a vision to bring the healing power of yoga to communities experiencing trauma in Uganda. Kim Ridgewell and Natalie Angell began to discuss ways to make this vision a reality and with the support of friends and family created ‘Shanti Uganda’. In 2007, Natalie left for Uganda and worked at a local school, began a yoga program for children and supported birthing women at a health clinic. Here, she met Lubwama Julius, who was a teacher at the school. Over the next year they began to support additional schools in the region and an income generating group for women with HIV/AIDS. The Shanti Uganda Society incorporated in 2008.

Shanti is a Sanskrit word meaning peace. It reflects the belief that peace begins within. In order for communities to develop a greater sense of solidarity and unity, they must first allow themselves to heal from within and act from a place of love and compassion.

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
- Gandhi

Ok, this blog post is for two different projects that share a name and are working essentially towards the same thing; teaching yoga to young people, giving them skills to support their vibrancy, strength and integration.

The first Yoga For Youth project has been around for 10 years. Based in Los Angeles county, the program teaches yoga to participants in detention camps and gives them skills like focus, calming techniques, meditation and of course, physical well-being. Using yoga as both a therapy and a preventative measure, the program is volunteer run and widely supported throughout California and through the help of the NEA. Way to go!! This is true rehabilitation. Enough with the incarceration mentality, let’s make yoga (union) happen for these people who are navigating their way through incredibly challenging life circumstances.

The next Yoga For Youth project was started two years ago in Saskatoon, Canada by Ryan Leier of One Yoga. YFY is a non-profit organization which recruits, trains and places yoga instructors in public schools and builds awareness and support for yoga for youth within the community. Working within the public school system and with kids from many different socio-economic backgrounds YFY is teaching valuable life lessons (and lessons for living) that are essential for folks of any age as they develop into mature and integrated people.

Listen to the CBC Radio profile on Saskatoon YFY:

01-yoga-for-youth-cbc-09_06_09

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

- Pablo Picasso

I have had the good fortune of knowing Melissa Michaels since I was just a youngin’! She was (and continues to be) one of my most influential mentors. I have seen her organization Golden Bridge grow into an international force that brings together youth (and elder) leaders from all corners of the globe building community, fostering positive action, social awareness and creative expression. She is tireless in her mission to spread love and inspire transformation through movement and ritual. Yay Melissa!

Melissa leads summer programs for youth and adults, weekly classes and regular workshops. She is continually accepting applications for her summer dance programs and now travels regularly to teach so she just might be coming to your corner of the globe sometime soon.

Since 1991, The Food Project has built a national model of engaging young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture. Each year, they work with over a hundred teens and thousands of volunteers to farm on 31 acres in rural Lincoln, MA and on several lots in urban Boston. The Food Project focuses on identifying and transforming a new generation of leaders by placing teens in unusually responsible roles, with deeply meaningful work.

Each season, TFP grows nearly a quarter-million pounds of food without chemical pesticides, donating half to local shelters and selling the remainder to (CSA) crop “shares” and farmer’s markets  They market their own farm-fresh salsa (which you can order from their site), holiday pies, and other value added products.  Locally, they also partner with urban gardeners to help them remediate their lead-contaminated soil and grow healthier food. How cool is that!!!

Check out The Food Project! And if you’re in the Boston area, get involved!

Food Not Bombs is a grassroots, revolutionary project that has chapters in most American and international cities and many small towns all over the world. FNB is completely community organized and made up of autonomous chapters that serve free vegetarian food as a positive action protest against war and poverty. Started in 1980 in Cambridge, MA by a group of anti-nuclear activists, FNB is one of the fastest growing and most effective revolutionary movements to date. Goes to show what some folks with some food can do!

Food Not Bombs official website is chock full of information and all kinds of materials you will need to start your own chapter (yes, you…) Download free posters, pamphlets, buttons, stickers and badges. Read up on your non-violence training manuals and manifestos and get out there and serve some vegetables!!

Chef, Hacker, Anarchist, Mark Powell presented foodhacking at Dorkbot this year with his liquid nitrogen ice-cream making presentation. Combine open-source programming, molecular gastronomy and anarchist ethics and there’s certainly some food for thought.

“Chefs are a lot like hardware hackers. Both geek out, absorbing the specs of (vegetables|technology) for the purpose of creating something that nobody else has: (innovative food|new machines). So what happens when the kitchen becomes a hack lab? Something delicious. Something geeky.” 

http://www.foodhacking.com/