Posts from ‘activism’
yes or no: new consent cards at kula annex
Image via Decolonizing Yoga FB page.
Kula Annex, one of the few studios with a positive space initiative, apparently offers “consent cards” to indicate if you want to be touched for adjustments (or anything) in their yoga classes.
As they state on their Facebook page:
we keep green + purple consent cards that read “yes, thank you” and “no, thank you.” we invite students to place either by the top corner of their mat at every practice to indicate to teachers whether or not they consent to physical adjustments. ultimately, consent helps us to cultivate a safer space.
What do you think? Should other yoga studios and teachers follow suit? Would you use consent cards if your studio had them?
New Leaf Yoga Foundation will be in Montreal on May 10 – 12 to present a yoga for youth workshop. Reaching In, Reaching Out is a weekend workshop exploring the techniques and skills needed to teach yoga to youth within diverse and sensitive environments, including:
- Practical ways to lead yoga classes that suit the needs of youth
- How to teach from a place of inquiry in order to foster more inclusive spaces
- Methods to engage young people and manage challenges in class settings
- Strategies for cultivating self-care
This workshop is geared towards yoga instructors seeking to bring yoga to adolescent populations, as well as those interested in learning how to foster inclusive spaces within yoga studios. It can also be a useful tool for individuals interested in making yoga more accessible in general.
Participants should have a 200-hour yoga teacher certification, although there may be exceptions. New Leaf offers yoga programs to youth who are facing barriers due to various forms of marginalization and trauma. They highlight making yoga accessible and relevant to young people and offer yoga within a trauma-sensitive and anti-oppression framework.
For more info about New Leaf, watch this IAYB interview with founder and executive director, Laura Sygrove.
Reaching In, Reaching Out: Yoga for Youth in Diverse Spaces
Friday, May 10 – Sunday, May 12, 2013
Naada Yoga, 5540 Casgrain Ave, Montreal
Image by Daniel Horowitz, via streetyoga.org
How can the yoga community put into action its values of interconnectedness, love and respecting humanity? In this guest post, Cristien Storm explores.
It is nine o’clock on a rainy Tuesday night and I’m tired and hungry. I want to go home and eat dinner. Instead, I sit with a young mother whose call to a crisis line connected her with in-home counseling and to me.
She sits on the edge of a brown faux-leather couch, silently crying. Her husband is in the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center where he has been held for two months waiting to find out if he qualifies for asylum. If he does not, he will be deported. If he is deported, the mother tells me she will no longer have any hope and she will follow through with her plan to kill herself.
I want to rip out my heart and hand it to her.
I want to send an army of badass ninjas to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center to smuggle her husband back home. I want anybody who has ever voted to deport “illegals” to look this little girl in the eyes as they explain why she has to grow up without a father. I want them to hold her gaze as they explain how a human being can be “illegal.”
We sit in silence.
For years, I’ve listened in yoga class as teachers talk about the interconnectedness of all living beings. I believe we are all interconnected. I do not, however, at this moment, feel interconnected with the young mother who sits on the end of a faux-brown leather couch, looking down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. I feel a million miles away, lost in a cloud of privilege. Continue Reading
Dianne Bondy & Chelsea Jackson.
In this excellent Skype interview, two of the biggest cheerleaders for increased diversity in the yoga community, Dianne Bondy and Chelsea Jackson, talk about the many complex issues surrounding the subject. Bondy, a yoga teacher based in Windsor, Ontario, invited Jackson, yoga teacher and founder of Chelsea Loves Yoga, to be on her latest podcast guest.
This dynamic exchange covers some of the issues surrounding diversity across cultures, communities, genders, races, and more. As Jackson commented on her Facebook page, “It is not always a comfortable conversation, but I think yogis are the best ones to start them!”
Is your local studio talking about privilege & power?
One of the most exciting things to happen in the online community in the past year is a broadening discussion about privilege and oppression. While the conversation has grown, it turns out some people have been thinking about this stuff for a while. This post was written in 2010, but has recently came to my attention when the author, Cristien Storm (a writer, activist and yoga practioner in Seattle) contacted me.
The ideals, philosophies, principles, and practices of yoga and meditation can transform individuals, communities and institutions. These same qualities can help us engage in movement building while being a powerful force for social change. Social change and liberation is not, however, what is happening in most yoga classes. When I ask people how their yoga practice and/or meditation practice helps them create social change, interrupt racism and oppression, or dismantle systemic and institutional oppression, I am often met with a blank stare or a pat response along the lines of, “Yoga helps me as an individual, which is part of changing the world.” Or, “My time on the mat is about me and my body.”
This is not a bad or incorrect response. It’s fantastic that yoga helps people stay committed to human rights and social change work. Our ability to stay committed matters tremendously when burnout and secondary trauma drain our most dedicated folks. But this simple answer strikes me to what is really a more complex exploration of how we can connect the qualities, principles, and ideals of yoga and meditation practice to social change. Continue Reading
