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Community

What is Community Care?

While we believe in self-care and encourage a self-nurturing approach to wellbeing and health, we also recognize that in order for self-care to be a possibility, you need a certain amount of time and money. This is where Community Care comes in. The idea is that we all need one another to survive and thrive, and that both the government and our own networks should provide it. It also means leveraging the resources and power you have to benefit others. Learn more by reading Emma's blog post here. 

Read up on the tangible ways that we’re working to provide community care, widen our canopy, increase access, and support inclusion.

Anti-Racism Initiatives

Our leadership team is engaged in a learning process about anti-racism and making our studio more welcoming and supportive to Black, Indigenous and Racialized People. We acknowledge that our wider culture is shaped by the delusion of white supremacy, and that actively interrupting this delusion is necessary in the journey towards equity. We acknowledge the work of local anti-racist educators Selam Debs and Carla Beharry as pivotal to our ongoing learning process, and particularly appreciate the learning we have gleaned from Selam's Anti-Racism Course.

  • Anti-Racist Book Club, meeting monthly since June 2020 

  • Scholarships for Black, Indigenous and Racialized individuals to access our Yoga Teacher Training Program

  • 6-week course BIPOC Embodiment for Trauma Recovery, in collaboration with Nicole Brown-Faulknor

  • Land Acknowledgements for larger events and Yoga in the Park

2SLGBTQIA+ Initiatives

Since 2013, all of our staff and volunteers have been required to complete training specifically about gender awareness and pronoun use, to make our space more welcoming and supportive to non-binary, gender non-conforming, LGBTQ2SAI+ folx.

  • Providing non-gendered washrooms and change space

  • Using correct pronouns  

  • Teaching with non-gendered language 

  • Scholarships for Transgender individuals to access our Yoga Teacher Training Program

  • Queer and Trans Yoga classes - currently programmed as Rainbow Restorative

  • Yoga in the Park PRIDE edition, in collaboration with Tri-Pride

Body Positivity

Since 2013, all of our staff and volunteers have been required to complete training specifically about size discrimination, fat-shaming, and body diversity, to make our space more welcoming and supportive for bigger-bodied students.

  • Offering Yoga for Round Bodies and Body Positive Yoga Courses

  • Ensuring all of our teachers can offer appropriate variations of poses for students in bigger bodies

  • Including a Yoga for Bigger Bodies module in our Yoga Teacher Training Program 

  • Asking for a commitment from all teachers and volunteers to eliminate any body-shaming, fat-shaming or diet talk from conversation or teaching language at the studio

Accessibility

We are committed to increasing accessibility to yoga in as many ways as we can, including financial accessibility, physically accessibility, and health accessibility.

  • Financial accessibility - We offer sliding scale prices for drop-in classes, workshops and courses. We offer a work-trade program for folks to exchange their time for free classes. We offer scholarships for our YTT program for low-income and disabled individuals. 

  • Scent-free accessibility - We aim to maintain a scent-free environment so that those with scent sensitivities/allergies can access our space. 

  • Physical accessibility - We are renovating our new location to include more options for physical accessibility to classes. We will post information here as the plans get solidified.

Trauma Awareness

We are committed to teaching with trauma-awareness and expanding the conversation about trauma in the yoga-teaching world.

Environmental Stewardship

We care deeply about the existential threat of climate change and we actively seek ways to support climate justice in the way we live and operate.

  • Operating in a location that’s highly accessible by public transit, walking and biking. Most of our staff use those methods to come to work.  

  • We have a steel roof, we heat and cool with a high efficiency heat pump, and we completely insulated our old building with spray foam insulation. 

  • We use simple, non-toxic cleaning products, and washable cloths for hand-towel, mat wipes, and cleaning.

Other Community Care Initiatives

  • Sharing free 10-Class Pass gifts to essential workers in Waterloo Region - March to June 2020

  • Sharing free 10-Class Pass gifts to workers affected by provincial government cuts, including healthcare workers and education workers - Fall 2019

  • Offering a weekly $5 Basics Class

  • Offering discounted membership to folks on ODSP

  • Teaching Yoga in the Park in partnership with the City of Kitchener- 2010-present