I met LaTron and Rodney at the At-Promise Center, where the Dharma Project offers a group of police officers and teens a weekly meditation and yoga class. At the start of every session, LaTron, to my right, expresses that black boys don't do yoga and he will not participate. Every week! That’s his narrative around yoga. They both make jokes and attempt to distract the other kids and officers from participating in the session.
I ran into them at an event Dharma Project did with HealthMPowers at the Boys and Girls Club recently. LaTron again said, ‘Black boys don’t do yoga’ but this time he actually participated. They both did the yoga. They felt their breath and their body, got quiet for moments at a time and at the end of the class Rodney gave me a big hug and asked when he will see me again at the At-Promise Center. Success! Black boys do do yoga!
The Dharma Project will continue to share more and more stories like these as more and more people are exposed to the healing and empowering potential of yoga. No matter who you are or where you come from, ALL people must have tools and practices to take care of their physical and mental health.
We are launching our Give Yoga, Get Yoga Teacher Training Course in March 2019. This program will help us spread our work to even more communities. We are doing a big fundraiser push in 2019 to make this training possible. Help us reach our goal by donating to the Dharma Project this holiday season! Give the gift of yoga to someone that didn’t even know yoga was for them. We all benefit when the most vulnerable have tools and practices to care for themselves and heal.
