About Street Yoga

Street Yoga was founded in 2002 when our executive director began teaching a yoga class to homeless youth in Portland at Outside In. Since then, we have grown to about 20 volunteers, offering 4 weekly classes in the Portland area, 2 weekly classes in Seattle and periodic wellness workshops.

If you're interested in starting a similar program, please read this.

Our primary focusing is teaching yoga and mindful self-care to young people who are at-risk or homeless. Our students include:

• -Homeless Youth - We offer classes at Outside In for youth 14-22 who are living on the streets or in very temporary shelter.
• -Girls in Foster Care - We offer classes at White Shield Center for girls 12-17 who are in state custody awaiting foster care placement.
• -Youth of Homeless Families - We teach a very energetic yoga class at the Community Transitional School to young people ages 9-14 whose families are homeless.
• -Young People Recovering from Abuse and Trauma - Our newest class is at the Morrison Edgefield campus for young people ages 6-11 who have a history of severe neglect, sexual & physical abuse and other traumas.

We began by teaching homeless youth, and have since learned that most of the young people on the streets have a history of involvement with the foster care system or have suffered sexual and physical abuse --often both situations at once. This has guided us to work with younger children and youth in state custody, so that not only are we working to alleviate the ill-effects of homelessness on the young, but are striving to prevent it altogether by heading off those very conditions which lead to homelessness in the first place.