PILOTING THE MANDELA YOGA SOLUTION WITH PATIENTS AT A CLINIC
In July 2022, MYP negotiated a fee-for-service contract to pilot Mandela Yoga at Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, led by Guy Fish, MD, MBA. The clinic serves more than 65,000 patients, some 68% of whom are Spanish-speaking. Dan Cranshaw of the Polsinelli law firm was MYP’s pro bono legal counsel.
In March 2023, MYP hosted a peer-facilitator training in Lawrence. Each new MYP Peer Facilitator will soon host their own community-based trauma responsive 12-week series of Mandela Yoga with their peers.
In April 2023, the clinic in Lawrence partnered with MYP on an IRB application to begin research on patient outcomes from their participation in peer-led Mandela Yoga sessions.
CEO & President of Greater Lawrence Family Health Center
Dr Guy Fish on launching a beginning partnership with Mandela Yoga Project
MYP founder Jeffrey Thomas recognizes trainee Carlos with a certificate of completion. Of the twelve participants in this cohort, Carlos Santiago was one of four to have 100% attendance.
WHAT WE DO
GOING TO SCALE WITH A PEER-LED SOLUTION TO
A DEADLY AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
The twin evils of diabetes and high blood pressure disproportionately and prematurely claim the lives of Black and Brown people in the United States at rates so alarming that leading professional health associations like the AMA and APA have declared a public health crisis.
Did you know that chronic diseases like diabetes & high blood pressure disproportionately affect Blacks (16.4% vs Whites 11.9%) and prematurely claim the lives of Blacks at twice the rate of Whites (37.8% vs 18.8%)?
We've designed an evidence-based, trauma-responsive, integrative health intervention for such public health crisis communities that promises to improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
It's a peer-led, neighborhood-based group practice of mindful movement and breathing called Mandela Yoga.
An introduction: Sonya's Sequence
Named for the founder’s late sister — “SONYA’S SEQUENCE” is a standardized, evidence-based, trauma-responsive, series of yoga postures. The 45-minutes-long peer-led practice is designed to be accessible to all bodies and all levels of mobility. The group practice of Sonya’s Sequence is the core of the Mandela Yoga solution.
Experience a sample of the Workbook provided to trainees
(available in both English and in Spanish)
Our nonprofit pilot implementation is with Worcester, Massachusetts - based reentry services nonprofit Legendary Legacies. We are especially pleased to join together to be part of the solution to the 69% rise in fatal Black overdoses reported in Massachusetts
PILOTING THE MANDELA YOGA SOLUTION WITH A NEIGHBORHOOD-BASED NON PROFIT SERVING PEOPLE OF COLOR
Our implementation with Legendary Legacies began Summer 2023
PATIENTS TRAIN TO LEAD THEIR OWN SESSIONS OF MANDELA YOGA
After practicing Mandela Yoga for several weeks, clinic patients with health conditions reported satisfaction. Some patients have enrolled in MYP's Peer Facilitator Training Program, which promises to fulfill our dream of resourcing people of color with chronic health conditions to be greater agents of their own healing and facilitators of self-healing within their communities. Graduates of the training program will soon host their own 12-week series of Mandela Yoga.
OUR COVID-19 EMERGENCY RESPONSE FOR PEOPLE AT SAN QUENTIN PRISON (playing again in 2023)
Mt. Tamalpais College and MYP began to collaborate to create Mandela Yoga Studio at San Quentin Prison - a virtual studio in the form of a library of high quality yoga videos featuring BIPOC yoga teachers and practices that speak to the specific needs and conditions of incarcerated individuals. When the COVID-19 outbreak reached the prison in the summer of 2020, MYP quickly pivoted to create a smaller yoga video collection featuring yoga teachers from across North America to support prisoners quarantining in their cells.
June 2023 Update : the virtual studio returned to San Quentin throughout the month of June 2023, with renewed enthusiasm for the impact of its content, and discussions about extended exhibition at the prison are underway
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS WORKSHOP
We conduct immersive workshops for white identified yoga teachers and white identified folks who believe that the work of dismantling racism begins with a focus on the neurobiologically-imprinted whiteness in our bodies. We learn to sit in the deep discomfort of metabolizing race-based stressors. Participants will leave with tools for self-regulation and responsibility to use when engaging around race and cross-racially. This first small step provides the seeds of somatic fortitude to continue this work for life.
Named after one of the most territorial and lethal animals on earth and belying the myth of gentle, water-going giant, the Hippopotamus Workshop is designed for white identified yoga teachers and others who - rather than insisting that they are untouched by the water in which they are swimming - have decided they are no longer willing to flow with the deep currents of systemic white supremacy and racial oppression that often wound BIPOC within the mercantile model of yoga and our culture at large.
In June 2023, Mandela Yoga Project Thought Partner and Peer Facilitator Trainer Emily Peterson led a donations-based class in partnership with Boston's Down Under School of Yoga. Class participants were led through an extract of the Hippopotamus Workshop.
Our fight to make yoga accessible is made possible, in part, by the support of 251 donors to the 2018 GoFundMe free yoga campaign and the David & Lynn Eikenberry Charitable Fund.
MYP's founding institutional supporters include: The Foundation for a Mindful Society (publishers of Mindful Magazine), Yoga Alliance Foundation, The Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation, Steve Phillips & Susan Sandler, and Kat Taylor.
Our current fiscal sponsor is Root Cause, a national non profit consulting firm that strives to eliminate disparities based on race, class, gender, and geography by partnering to design, implement, and measure strategies that enable more people to achieve lifelong success.
Mandela Yoga Project on Guidestar
