June Joy

Street Yoga Newsletter, June Joy, June 2009

Update from Mark Lilly, Street Yoga Founder and Board President

Dear Ones,

One of the biggest celebrations we've had within the Street Yoga community is witnessing the growth of yoga as service within our local and national communities. What we now offer is becoming accepted as valuable healing work for many distressed populations. Parallel with our growth, there has been simultaneous flourishing of similar work across North America.

Last month, a dozen leaders from the North American Yoga Service community gathered at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, to hold the 1st Annual Summit on Yoga, Mindfulness and Service. It was wildly successful. The attendees formed from the substance of our sharing a new organization dedicated to collecting and publishing best practices in the field of yoga service, and facilitating coordinated research across sites nationwide. The newly constituted Yoga Service Council will continue the work done at Omega and will come to serve as a clearinghouse for resources and so much more. Our vision for this shared work is "to foster joy, resilience, and well being in every person regardless of circumstance so that all communities can thrive", and a focused mission, which reads: "To support individuals and organizations to best serve and empower their communities through yoga".

We will share more of this in the months to come, and Street Yoga is proud to be part of this wonderful coming together of so many amazing people, people just like the volunteers, supporters and staff of Street Yoga, right here in Portland.

To get an overview of the Summit, you can watch a video by clicking here.

Gratitude

Celebration of Home. We have so much gratitude for everyone who joined our Community of Supporters over the last month. The event is over, but the invitation for sponsorship remains. For those who were able to attend this beautiful event on June 6, thank you for coming. We would also like to thank everyone who contributed to the evening. We could not have done it without you. Enormous Thank You to: Brian and Melody Emerick, of emerick architects p.c. - it was so gracious of you to let us into your stunning home. Noteworthy Strings Cello Trio - your music was beautiful throughout the night. Jacob Handwerker and Lila Donnolo, your AcroYoga demonstration was inspiring! Noble Rot - your food was delectable!! Cristom Vineyards - Thank you for providing the wine for the night, it was great. Chocolate Lilly - your chocolates were delicious!
Campbell Salgado Studio We are so grateful to the Campbell Salgado Studio for donating their time and effort to take pictures of some of our kids doing yoga. Their pictures are amazing and they manage to capture the yoga glow in each and every one of the kids. Thank you so much. If you haven't seen the pictures yet, click here and check them out. They will be all over our new website when we launch it in the next couple weeks.
Yoga, Mindfulness and Service Summit Thank you to everyone who came together to share their passion and ideas about yoga, mindfulness and service this past month. We are so grateful to the The Omega Institute for hosting this summit.
All of You who contacted legislators in Oregon to advocate for continued funding for the Family Sexual Abuse Treatment Program. It worked! The program was funded for another year. Inumerable children will be able to ease the horrors they carry of traumatic sexual abuse. Thank you for showing up on their behalf!

Upcoming Events

Peer Support Group
Sunday, June 28th 1:00 - 2:30 pm at OM Tradition Studios
14 NE 10th St., Portland, OR
This session will begin with a 30 minute yoga session followed by a discussion about your Street Yoga experiences. We know that teaching a yoga class to those with traumatic pasts can be, at times, traumatic for you all. We hope to alleviate some of this trauma by providing you a with a space to get together with other volunteers and support each other. Please come with any questions or concerns that you have about your class and be prepared to both get and give advice. You don't have to be an active volunteer to attend, this is a great chance for interested volunteers to get to know some of the Street Yoga volunteers and to hear about what they do. Please email jade@streetyoga.org or call 503.232.0362 if you want to attend or if you have any questions.
Portland Art Museum: Family Days
Sunday, July 19th 12 - 4 pm - Free Admission
This summer the Portland Art Museum will be hosting a Family Day in celebration of the acquisition of the Ganesh sculpture. The theme of this day will be an Indian Festival and they will have Indian-food carts, art making, dancing, henna and YOGA provided by Street Yoga! We have volunteers who will be doing short yoga sessions in the park outside the museum all day long. This is going to be a fun, kid oriented day! We hope to see many of you there! We will also be selling our new Street Yoga t-shirts at the event, featuring Ganesh.
Karma Yoga Night at Yoga Union
Saturday, August 8th 5:30 - 8 pm
Save the Date!! This fun evening will begin with an intro to AcroYoga class taught by Superbaby (Jacob Handwerker and Lila Donnolo) and a brief Street Yoga orientation, followed by a wine and cheese reception with live harp music. Wine to be provided by Cristom Vineyards and love and squalor. A sliding scale donation of $10-40 includes admission and one raffle ticket!

Upcoming Workshops

Healing Arts Series
Every Tuesday in July 5:45 - 7:45 pm at OM Tradition Arts
During the month of July, Street Yoga is hosting a Healing Arts Workshop Series. For more information about the individual workshops, click here. Each workshop is $25 or $85 for all four; $5 per workshop for active Street Yoga volunteers. 503.232.0362 or email jade@streetyoga.org to register.
- July 7th: Fun with Energy Anatomy taught by Darcy Molloy, Reiki Master.
- July 14th: Nia: Dancing Through Life taught by Erika Ruber, Nia Brown Belt
- July 21st: Do Nothing, Lose Stress! Mindfulness Meditation for Stress Reduction taught by Dan Rubin, Psy.D., Psychotherapist at Portland Mindfulness Therapy
- July 28th: Health and Healing Perspectives from Yoga taught by Andy Manitog, experienced yoga teacher and astrologist.
Moving Through Trauma with Love and Stillness
Every Tuesday in August 5:45 - 7:45 pm at OM Tradition Arts, Taught by our very own Mark Lilly
This series if for adults who are enduring the effects of any form of trauma, whether recent or old, psychic or physical, spiritual or emotional. It is an extended series to help those who have experienced trauma in their own lives and wish to continue and deepen the healing process. Click here for more info, the schedule is listed below. It is $100 for this four-week workshop. To register, please email jade@streetyoga.org or call us at 503.232.0362.
- August 4th: Touching Stillness
- August 11th: Healing Within
- August 18th: Giving to Grow Strong
- August 25th: Creating Grace; Finding Gratitude

AmeriCorps Positions

We have two fantastic opportunities to become involved with Street Yoga through AmeriCorps. Both positions offer a monthly stipend along with an education award upon completion of your service with us.

Volunteer Coordinator - This position is part time (20 hr/week). Your main focus will be volunteer recruitment and support but you will also work on curriculum along with teaching a weekly yoga class. Click here for more info.
Web Assistant - This position is part time (8 hr/week) and you would be helping to maintain our website, social media sites and blog. Click here for more info.

Street Yoga Teacher Trainings

We just concluded our most recent training, in San Francisco, and it was a wonderful success. People shared so much from their heart of yoga and service! Great connections were made and we all look forward to growing our collaboration together. Here's a link with pictures, and some quotes from the training.

Upcoming

We offer a weekend teachers' training for community members interested in learning how yoga serves vulnerable young people and their families, not only homeless youth, but young people who are faced with challenges stemming from overcoming the pain of sexual and physical abuse, homelessness, mental illness or familial substance addiction and other traumas.

The training is open to experienced yoga teachers as well as those with little to no experience with yoga. In the past we've had massage therapists, nurses, social workers, teachers and many others join us for a weekend of connection, learning and soul-building.

We offer 14 hours of CEU's for Social Workers and Yoga Teachers for this training.

Washington DC, July 31-Aug 2, 2009 Full
Portland, OR, Aug 29-31, 2009 Sign up now. (Almost Full!)
Boston, MA, Sep 11-13 More info coming soon
Toronto, ON, Oct 16-18, Sign up now.

Street Yoga Alumni

Street Yoga folks come from all over to this work, and we celebrate the diversity and the energy they share. We are glad to begin recognizing some of the endeavors Street Yoga Alumni feel connected to.

Yoga with displaced children in Colombia
One of our recent alums has been teaching yoga to children displaced by war in Columbia. She writes: "I finally got started teaching yoga at an elementary school here in Bogotá, and it's going awesome! It's in an area called Ciudad Bolivar, basically a poor slum area with lots of people that were forced to flee the conflict and settle in Bogotá. I teach 2 groups of 5th graders.

"In my day job, we are working on a proposal for preventing child recruitment into armed groups and promoting the reintegration of former child soldiers. Many (if not most) of these children have been abused, and a large number sexually.... We have a Sports for Change program that involves some asanas and visualization..."

if you want to tell us your Street Yoga alumni story, just drop us a line.

Street Yoga Apparel For Sale

We have women's t-shirts and tanks for sale in raspberry and light blue as well as men's t-shirts in light blue and dark blue. Click here to see the style! All proceeds benefit Street Yoga! We have a beautiful new design coming soon - keep your eyes peeled!!

Donating to Street Yoga

We deeply appreciate your support. Any contributions you can make will help us help the youth, one breath at a time. If you want to donate directly, please click here.