| Our newsletters have been a tool for informing
supporters and volunteers about current and planned projects, and
give a good feel of the lessons we are learning as we teach yoga
to homeless and at risk youth. Please feel free to read our current newsletter (March, 2007),
or a past issue by clicking on one of the following links.
Thanks. Past Newsletters |
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| August 27,
2006 June 15, 2006 May 17, 2006 Feb 16, 2006 Dec 22, 2005 Oct 27, 2005 Sept 22, 2005 July 22, 2005 |
Apr 22, 2005
Feb 5, 2005 Oct 29, 2004 May 14, 2004 Mar 8, 2004 Feb 7, 2004 Jan 2, 2004 Sept 12, 2003 |
Aug 5, 2003
July 22, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 22, 2003 May 30, 2003 May 16, 2003 May 9, 2003 May 2, 2003 |
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It's been a busy month and here at Portland at least, we have been able to welcome the changing of the seasons and the coming of the rain. Very nice. We hope you all are well in your unique practice of Life.
After much thought and input from a number of you, i sent the following Mission statement to Sarahjoy for inclusion in Living Yoga material. Given a host of factors, it seemed most prudent to narrow our focus from teaching yoga in non-traditional settings to all who need it, to addressing the populations of youth and adults who are homeless. At present we are dedicated primarily to serving young people, but seeing connections between women in shelters and youth on the streets made it seem appropriate to include all people who live without safe, adequate or reliable housing within our mission.
Street Yoga is a project of the non-profit organization Living Yoga. Street Yoga is dedicated to providing free, accessible, highest-quality yoga instruction to homeless youth and adults. Street Yoga welcomes all people who lack access to mainstream yoga teaching because of obstacles caused by homelessness, including lack of reliable transportation, inability to pay, physical limitations, race, gender, age or any other such conventional barrier.
Through yoga teaching with a focus on breath awareness, meditation, and building core strength, we seek to help homeless people build self confidence, increase self awareness, and find empowerment within their own lives. These strengths will help people find within themselves sustainable tools to face life's challenges in a positive, effective way.
As for providing yoga teaching to the larger community of people who otherwise cannot access it, this work is already underway with Living Yoga. Living Yoga's prison program was the first step, and Street Yoga, by serving homeless people, is a second. Living Yoga is growing to potentially include programs for recovering addicts, people with eating disorders, cancer survivors and people in hospice to name a few.
Out yoga teaching is growing and we are learning as much as we are teaching. It has been gratifying for all of us who have had the opportunity to share the life affirming practice of yoga with homeless youth.
Teaching continues at Outside In. Three new teachers have joined us and we are beginning to see repeat students, which is gratifying. We are learning to better communicate with the staff and executives at O/I about the aims and benefits of our work. As well, we are gaining valuable experience teaching yoga to homeless youth, and are refining our ability to offer what they need to help themselves find their own way.
Our experiment with teaching yoga in the chaos of the day program space on Thursdays appears to be nearing an end. We have been told by a number of youth that they don't like practicing yoga while people are watching them. We are in the process of working out arrangements to move the Thursday class downstairs to the same room as the Sunday class. While this will lessen our exposure, we believe it will give those youth who want to do yoga a more centered opportunity to begin or continue their own practice. It will also allow teachers and students to gradually create a real Yoga Space at Outside In.
Anne, Karen, Lisa and myself met with Sara D. and Sherry at the Salvation Army's White Shield Center last week. We will be starting to teach the girls there on October 1st, and every Wednesday after that from 3:30-4:30. It will be a challenging opportunity to bring yoga teaching to a group of young people who have painfully low regard for their own special place in this world.
A couple of other opportunities are coming together in the Living Yoga/Street Yoga community. While, due to time contraints on my volunteer capabilities, these are not official Street Yoga or Living Yoga programs, we are helping to nurture them and hopefully create a sustainable model in these alternative settings.
Sarah Patterson has begun teaching yoga at the DePaul treatment centers. These classes run Wednesdays from 3-4:15, with the possibility of adding a Tuesday night class at 6:50-7:55. They also have a teen program in NE Portland that is interested in finding new teachers for an existing Monday afternoon class.
Sarah wrote about this project: “DePaul is located downtown, on 14th and Washington, really easy to get to. These classes would be for the women in this residential, long term treatment program. They have had weekly yoga for some time, some of them are VERY in to it. Their whole program is build around a mindfulness model that fits beautifully with yoga.” You can click here to contact Sarah directly by email.
Another worthy venture is Darcy Lyon's work at Transition Projects. She is currently teaching there mid-day Wednesdays from 11:30 to 12:30. They also have a men's shelter which is interested in having a yoga program.
Darcy and i will be meeting next month to study how this effort can be brought closer to the work we are doing with homeless youth at Outside In and White Shield. You can click here to contact Darcy directly by email.
Matt, Sarah P. and i met with three people at InAct last week and they are very interested in having yoga there. However, as these endeavors take a lot of time to put together and maintain, and as addiction recovery is a bit away from Street Yoga's more focused mission, i have told them that we won't be able to provide them with any teaching in the near term. I did mention to them that as part of Living Yoga, we collectively are developing an addiction recovery program; the first wave of this will be providing teaching at the DePaul treatement centers here in Portland beginning this fall. As the recovery program builds momentum, hopefully we will be able to provide yoga teaching to the folks at InAct.
If any of you want to volunteer for any of these yoga teaching endeavors and you're not already involved, let me know. I will continue administering and teaching with the Outside In and White Shield projects, and will continue striving to document our learning for use by others in the future. In addition, i will offer some support to these other worthy projects as they grow and take shape.
There are a lot of behind the scenes activites going on, any of which you are all welcome to help with. In addition to all the yoga teaching mentioned above, small groups of people are working on the following:
Street Yoga Orientation. In conjunction with Living Yoga, Street Yoga will be contributing to Living Yoga orientation for anyone interested in volunteering to teach yoga in non-traditional settings. We will share info about the work we do and explain how people can teach yoga to homeless young people and adults.
Curriculum for White Shield. Lisa, Karen, Anne and i are working on creating a curriculum for the girls 11-17 who live at White Shield. There are very unique challenges with this teaching opportunity, and we are striving to put together a yoga practice that will help build self-esteem, postitive body awareness, and a sense of self-enpowerment.
Street Yoga Training. I have discussed with Sarahjoy the specifics of a training for teachers new to Street Yoga. What exactly this will include i don't yet know yet, but it will convey the blend of yoga and knowledge of homeless issues that we are acquiring. This is something i hope current SY teachers will be able to help with a lot.
Living Yoga Fundraiser. I don't know much about this, but Sarahjoy is hosting a fundraiser and i'm sure would welcome volunteers.
Teaching SY Workshops. As part of our work, we have talked about doing workshops for various groups to demonstrate what we do. I think the first place to teach would be for staff at Outside In. We can discuss this more when the teachers meet in October month.
Creating New Programs. As i mentioned elsewhere, Living Yoga is expanding beyond teaching yoga in prisons and to homeless youth. If you have energy and drive to spearhead an effort to coordinate an addiction recovery program, one for cancer survivors or people in hospice, whatever, let me know. Sarahjoy and are working on program development material to help others build sustainabile yoga teaching for diverse groups of people.
GrantWriting. Again, Sarahjoy has momentum in this direction and if you are interested in writing about how Street Yoga benefits homeless youth and can see pulling that into a grant application, let me know. I have found a dozen or so sources of funding that support the sort of work we do at Street Yoga and plan to work on building supporting material for the grant process during the autumn months.
There are probably other items. Let me know if anything tickles your fancy and we'll see about making it happen.
