Street Yoga Newsletter, October 2009
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In This Issue
- Upcoming Workshops and Events - lots of great happenings
- Street Yoga in the Give!Guide - yay!
- Mindful Parents and Caregivers - 8 sessions in, very powerful
- Upcoming Trainings - Toronto, Advanced Training in Portland, NYC...
- Gratitude (lots of it!) and more.
Please keep reading for all the info.
Upcoming Workshops and Events
- Street Yoga’s Second Annual Fall into Gratitude Event, Oct, 24 from 4:30 to 7:30pm at Heartsong Yoga and Wellness Center, 3841 SW Hall Blvd. Beaverton, OR 97005, (503) 644-1865
Join us in celebrating fall and supporting Street Yoga. SY Volunteer teacher Sweethome will lead a 75 minute Vinyasa moonflow to live harp music provided by volunteer Justine Flynn with a food and wine reception to follow. Learn about Street Yoga and meet Street Yoga volunteers! The cost is $20 and includes a raffle ticket for a 30 day unlimited membership at Heartsong. RSVP to adrienne@streetyoga.org For more information and to register, click here. or 503-232-0362. Special thanks to our sponsors, Heartsong Yoga, Ken's Artisan Bakery, Chocolate Lily, and Cristom Vineyards for supporting this event. - Sellwood Yoga A Celebration and Benefit for Street Yoga, Oct, 24 from 1:30 to 8:30pm at Sellwood Yoga
Come celebrate the opening of Sellwood Yoga and help raise money for Street Yoga.
There will be a trunk show featuring the latest fashions in yoga-inspired apparel for healthy living from lululemon athletica and kids' activities from SpielWerk Toys. Everyone is invited to attend an all-levels yoga class at 4:00pm featuring a special introduction by Street Yoga founder Mark Lilly. Donations for the class and for the day's events will be given to Street Yoga.
After the class, an evening reception featuring a tea sampling from Jade Teahouse and Patisserie, wine from Burdigala, and raw cacao and truffles from Andrea Caplan Livingston's Phytofoods will be available. For more information, please click here. - Partner Flying Yoga, October Workshop Series October 13, 20, 27; 6-7:30pm @Om Tradition Arts, 14 NE 10th Avenue.
Come play and learn to fly! By uniting a community of practitioners, Partner Flying Yoga connects us to our joyful and playful nature. By stretching, breathing, and playing together we'll cultivate a supportive environment that takes us into the exciting and unique world of flight and partner yoga. This class will give you the opportunity to experience your body and mind in a brand new way. No experience or partner needed... just a willingness to play, laugh, and say YES! Cost is $15 per class - you can still catch the last class of the series! Register now by e-mailing Adrienne@streetyoga.org, or call 503-232-0362. Class income benefits Street Yoga. - Heart of Healing presents: Village Dance Convergence, Friday, November 6, 2009 7 pm @ Village Ballroom 700 NE Dekum St Portland,
Come join your community for yoga, a free-form dance, food, conversation, live music, and many more healthy activities to benefit community health care solutions. This celebrational evening will feature Portland’s famed ecstatic dance in a beautifully decorated hardwood space and will intertwine live music into your evening. Admission: Open to the public at a sliding scale of $10 to $25
Contact info: Mike Meyer mmeyer@efn.org 503-680-6576 Website: http://www.pnhp.org. For more information, click here.
Give!Guide
Street Yoga is grateful to have been selected by Willamette Week for inclusion in the 2009 Give!Guide. The sixth annual Give!Guide is an annual holiday season fundraiser that serves as a unique vehicle for generating donations for a collection of Portland area non-profit organizations.
The goals of the Give!Guide are threefold
- to encourage people age 18-35 to get involved in philanthropy
- to attract new donors and/or volunteers to these causes; and
- to provide publicity to a variety of local non-profits
Donors can make contributions online via the Give!Guide website. Donations are accepted from the date of the Give!Guide publication (Wednesday, November 11), to midnight on December 31.
In appreciation of those who support Street Yoga through a Give!Guide donation, Street Yoga will be offering the following gifts:
- Donors giving $50 or more to Street Yoga will receive one free yoga class at a participating studio.
- Donors giving $100 or more to Street Yoga will receive 2 free yoga classes at a participating studio.
- Donors giving $500 or more to Street Yoga will receive a 10-class-card at a participating studio.
- In addition, donors at the $100 level or more will receive a Street Yoga t-shirt.
Thank you so much to our Give!Guide supporters, who have so generously offered their services and support in the Street Yoga Give!Guide campaign: The Julie Lawrence Yoga Center, Yoga Pearl, The People's Yoga, Potentials Yoga Studio, Sellwood Yoga, The Bhaktishop, Yoga Shala, Holiday's Health and Fitness Yoga, and The Yoga Union.
For more information about the Give!Guide, click here.
Though Give Guide does not open unitl November 11, you may contribute at any time to Street Yoga. Any contributions you can make will help us help the youth, one breath at a time. Please click here.
Street Yoga Update: Mindful Parents and Caregivers
We just concluded the first half of two Mindful Parents and Caregivers workshop series. This is a perfect example of how we have grown over the last few years. Recognizing the need to serve not only the young people we meet every day in Street Yoga classes, we developed the MPC program to bring mindfulness skills to their parents and caregivers. We just finished four weeks with social workers and therapists at the Children's Relief Nursery and Morrison Child and Family Services. The feedback has been extremely positive. Participants have been using the practices to stay healthier, more grounded, and more connected to their own needs. From that foundation, they have found increased spaciousness and vitality to share these skills with their clients. Already, young boys and girls struggling with the aftereffects of sexual abuse are being guided to new ways of healing by the therapists we have been teaching. Workshop participants are also sharing sharing these new mindfulness skills in staff meetings, parenting groups, at home and informally with each other.
We taught 35 people, and already hundreds have been touched by the simple skills of mindfulness: noticing, breathing, slowing down, holding space for meeting everyone's needs in a safe and nurturing way.
We appreciate your support as we grow this work and bring it to more locations. Next week we start the same series with parents at the same two sites, giving them the same tools their social workers now have. Parents/care-givers, social workers and the children they care for are all receiving the benefits of yoga and mindfulness practices, and we can already see the ripples.
Huge(!) thanks to Erika Ruber, who co-developed the curriculum and co-teaches all the classes and to Adam Benjamin, our MSW intern from Portland State University. Thanks also to Enhanced Sports Performance Massage Therapy and to The Bhaktishop for providing participant incentives. Thanks also to Erin (FSAT) and Karen (CRN) for their efforts to help bring this about. Finally, thanks to Vision into Action and the City of Portland for funding this program.
To read more about the Mindful Parents and Caregivers program, and to inquire about setting up a similar program for your people, click here.
Gratitude
Street Yoga is happy to welcome Julie Larson, Laura Walsh, Melissa Kerry, and Cat Monroy as new Street Yoga board members.
Thank you to Lululemon Athletica in the Pearl for highlighting Street Yoga as a charity to give to this week in their community event. They helped us raise $400 for Street Yoga programs. Yeah Lulu!!
Thank you to The People's Yoga for hosting our Street Yoga teacher support/training meeting this month. Your new space is beautiful!
Thanks again to Campbell Salgado Photography for taking photos of some Street Yoga students (see photo to the left.)
Our wonderful Street Yoga volunteer and fabulous yoga teacher, Sweethome, will be teaching a class at The Yoga Shala on North Williams on Saturdays from 10-11:15 a.m. She will donate 10% of the proceeds to Street Yoga. Thank you Sweethome.
Introduction from our New Web Assistant
We warmly welcome Melanie to the Street Yoga team. Her personal note follows:
Greetings!
My name is Melanie Harrison and I am the new Americorps member and Web Assistant at Street Yoga. I have a design and photography background, as well as a long history of working with both arts and education non-profits. I am in the process of finishing up an associate's in Computer Information Systems at PCC, and am pretty excited about moving into a new area of creativity - the internets :-) I am so inspired by all the people who work so devotedly to make Street Yoga's mission a reality, and am happy to be able to contribute in my own way to getting this message of love and hope out there. I look forward to meeting some of you over the months ahead, and watching Street Yoga continue to grow and evolve. Feel free to check out my work at www.element47photography.com
Warmly, Melanie.
Street Yoga Teacher Trainings
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.
* Toronto, ON, Nov 6-8, Sign up now.
* Seattle, WA November 6-8, Sign up now.
* New York City, NY January 15-17, 2010, Sign up now.
* Eugene, OR, February 5-7, 2010; Sign up now.
* Washington, DC, February 26-28, 2010; Sign up now.
* Portland, OR, March 26-28;
* Tucson, AZ, March 26-28;
* Chicago, IL, April 9-11, 2010;
* Philadelphia, PA May 21-23, 2010;
* San Diego, CA June 16-18, 2010;
Advanced Teacher Training
This new training will be in Portland, OR on December 4,5,6. It is geared towards people who have taken our core teacher training or have significant experience teaching yoga and working in a social service context (though they don't have to have been at the same time).
Learn about:
* the physiological and psychological characteristics of trauma on the body and mind
* how yoga and mindfulness can heal in the wake of trauma
* communication techniques to contain and defuse conflict and better advocate for yourself and those in your care.
* best practices for teaching yoga to specific populations, focusing on addiction recovery, abuse survivors, homeless youth, young moms, kids in detention, and more.
Spotlight on a Street Yoga Site
“I'm learning so much about being a teacher with every class. I serve 2-5 kids at every class. Small classes leave a lot of room for individualized attention, so I like it and I'm sure the kid's do too. Harry's Mother's staff and I have become fast friends, one of the staff members almost always participates, which is great! It get's the kid's more involved when they have an adult they already trust as a fellow student of yoga. I think my favorite experience is when I had a very un-enthusiastic kid in my class who did not what to try yoga at all, but by the end of the class, he was so relaxed and rejuvenated, he couldn't wait to do it again. Every class is an opportunity for transformation! Thank you to The Hawthorne Wellness Center for donating space for this class every week for the many years! It is such a beautiful venue to take the kids.”
From Laura Cooper, Street Yoga Teacher at Harry's Mother
(Image copyright Campbell Salgado Photography)
Street Yoga in the Press
If you haven't seen these yet, please check out this great story about Street Yoga on National Public Radio by Neda Ulaby, released on August 30.
This comes after great articles on Street Yoga recently in Slate Magazine, and the Washington Post .
Older, but still worth watching is our youtube video. We are thrilled by our national coverage and national response.
Call to Service. Join our Street Yoga Board of Directors
Do you love yoga and believe in its power to transform lives? Do you feel a call to serve kids and families living on the edge? We are looking for leaders to serve on the Street Yoga Board of Directors, especially individuals with key competencies in strategic planning, fund-raising, accounting, risk management, human resources and marketing. If you're interested please conact Adrienne Boxer at 503.232.0362 or email her at adrienne@streetyoga.org
In return, we offer you the opportunity to contribute to a great organization, professional development and good times with other committed, wonderful individuals. As Street Yoga has grown over the years, so too has our need for amazing people to help us stay solid, balanced and healthy. To learn more, check out our Board Member Job Description, our Board Member Application, Street Yoga Bylaws and our Legal Rights and Responsiblities Document. All documents are available in .pdf upon request.
Twitter and Facebook
Look for web updates on Twitter and Facebook. To follow us on Twitter click here. And for our Facebook page click here to join. This is a great way to stay updated on Street Yoga events and trainings and to stay in touch with the Street Yoga community.
Street Yoga Apparel For Sale
We have a beautiful new t-shirt design that features Street Yoga's take on Ganesh. The theme of the t-shirts is Triumph. We have all colors and sizes - you can check them out here. All proceeds benefit Street Yoga.
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.
Namaste
many smiles,
the Folks at Street Yoga
