Hi All, Here's the notes i put together after meeting with Jonathan and Adrienne about getting started at SMYRC.
Overview: The goal of this class is to create a safe place for sexual and gender minority youth (LGBTQ youth) to congregate and practice yoga together. The classes will be held at SMYRC (Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center), which is located in SE Portland around Belmont and 20th.
The Need: Many queer youth, especially transgender youth, find it difficult to seamlessly integrate in mainstream society. This applies to yoga as well. Many yoga teachers do not have the experience with or vocabulary to sensatively and openly welcome LGBTQ youth into their classes, and many yoga students remain uncomfortable or confused by openly out queer youth. As such, many queer youth don't practice yoga within mainstream society.
At the same time, a much larger percentage of youth on the streets self-report as being a sexual or gender minority than in the general population. This stems from the intolerance many parents show to their very own children, many of whom get evicted from their homes simply because of their sexual identity.
Model: These classes will build on SMYRC's Health & Wellness model of offering services. Already there are classes there in cooking/nutrition, body image and others. The youth there have asked for yoga classes and this will fit in quite well.
Details: The classes would be held once/week, likely Wed or Fri from 5-6 or 6-7pm, at SMYRC. It is estimated that between 10-15 youth will join the classes, and classes will be structured as part of a group activity time. This means that all of SMYRC will be doing yoga at yoga time, with drop in hours to begin at 7pm.
Long-Term: In addition to offering quality yoga classes, we can foresee a number of different threads:
- We'd like to build a knowledge around teaching sexual and gender minorities in general, and youth and particular, and report our findings to the mainstream yoga world so that they can become more aware of the specific needs of folks in this community.
- Develop an understanding of the language and vocabularies that are most welcoming to LGBTQ youth.
- Build a repository of stories of sexual and gender minority youth and their experiences with yoga.
- Work with some of the most enthused youth around training to become classroom assitants and co-teachers. This can lead to jo opportunities and further integration between this community and the mainstream yoga world.
- Pursue joint funding opportunities with SMYRC around all these above notions and how to share that info more widely across all yoga communities.
Contact people:
- Jonathan Weedman, Program Director at SMYRC
- Adrienne Wolmark, Counseling Center Director, YWCA
- Mark Lilly, Director, Street Yoga
