YOGA IS THE ARTFORM; OUR BUSINESS IS SOCIAL CHANGE.
Our mission is to create an intersectional yoga studio that brings people together across lines of difference, diversifies our existing practice community, and organizes our healing and creative artists into a unified force for change. YIU is more than a studio - it is a platform for working together.
Origins
We began our work teaching yoga to youth through our nonprofit Empowered Minds. For over a decade, we had one foot in the public school system and another in the boutique studio mold. When our staff, families, and students started asking for yoga, we knew we needed a space that was:
accessible, with no financial barrier to entry;
symbolically relevant and non-appropriative;
trauma-informed, inclusive, and adapted for any body;
and representative of the vast cultures we embody and endeavor to reach.
We set out to create one.
Our “Why”
We believe that the aim of yoga is not perfect mastery over technique, but the ability to bring one’s insights and sensitivities into the world through action. As written by Michael Stone in Yoga for a World Out of Balance, we believe “yoga occurs when our inner work manifests in the world around us.”
We are living in times of unrestraint. The world’s spiritual traditions are confronted with an ecological crisis, existentially-confused and polarized populations. It is to these issues that all spiritual traditions must respond if they are to serve the goals of freedom, happiness, and compassion that they promise. These goals can’t be served by reinventing ideologies or theological viewpoints. We must tune into the rivers, to one another, to the vinegar fog that surrounds every city. It is in this troubled world that we practice yoga, and it is to this reality that we must respond.
This project is our response. At the heart of our ethos is seva, or selfless service, inspired by the recognition of our interconnection. We engage art as a form of action. We organize cooperatively as a form of action. We emerge as a force for togetherness in increasingly polarized times.
We have chosen the cooperative trust model because we believe in the regenerative and life-giving power of the cooperative movement, but there is no co-op statute in South Carolina. This model allows us to name the community as beneficiary and avoid any one person having control. We work together to achieve the goals defined by the community, and we benefit as a community. We believe cooperative governance to be a whole-system hack to democratize the workplace, place power back in the hands of the people, and redistribute wealth amongst the community that shapes it.
Our commitment is to economic democracy, grassroots organizing, and the emergent solidarity economy. We model these values through our trust model, which is one way in which we live our yoga.
Community Agreements
We are all here because we want and choose to be here.
This shared space is a brave space.
Do what you must to take care of yourself.
This shared space is a coalition space. We are committed to struggling together to create better worlds. This work is both painful and joyful.
Relationship before tasks: We always check-in.
Listen, learn, implement, and trust lived experience. (PRAXIS PROJECT)
Share the mic and pass the mic. Don’t police the mic.
Speak from your own experience. Speak your personal truth by using "I " statements.
Share values of collaboration, risk, trust, and integrity.
Challenge the idea, not the person.
Lean into discomfort. It's how we grow. We affirm that conflict can be generative. We agree to disagree respectfully.
Assume good intent, until proven otherwise.
Be conscious of intent vs. impact - no matter your intention, you are responsible for your impact.
Mistakes are inevitable and necessary to learning.
Acknowledge when harm has taken place, and proactively work to repair the relationship.
Do not expect to be coddled. We respect each person’s need to take care of themselves.
Strive to share language that respects everyone.
Honor privacy and confidentiality. Keep the content and the process in the room.
Respect each other’s time. Be ready to work at our agreed-upon schedule and communicate conflicts with that schedule as soon as they are known.
Let people finish their thoughts. Make space for each other.
Expect and accept non-closure
resource list + recommended reading
From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice
The State of Racial Disparities in Charleston, SC 2000-2015
Yoga for a World Out of Balance, by Michael Stone
Embracing Yoga’s Roots, by Susanna Barkataki
Culture Jam, by Kalle Lasn
Oneness vs. The 1%, by Vandana Shiva
Red, Hot & Holy, by Sera Beak
My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menakem
The Politics of Trauma, by Staci Haines
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk