Age is often measured in years, but in the yoga community, we measure it in impact. Just as a practitioner’s understanding deepens, time has given us clarity into a single truth - yoga is for everyone.

At Yoga Alliance, our mission is rooted in service: to support the yoga community in advancing high-quality, accessible, and equitable yoga over the past 27 years. We believe meaningful change happens when we listen deeply and collaborate with those who are already doing the work on the ground.

Across the globe, yoga professionals are partnering with their communities to create spaces of healing, resilience, and connection. Through providing funding, resources, and ongoing support, Yoga Alliance works alongside teachers and organizations expanding access to yoga in schools, shelters, hospitals, refugee camps, rural areas, and other underserved spaces.

The stories below reflect the many ways yoga becomes more than a practice; it becomes a pathway to empowerment, belonging, and collective well-being.

Building Bridges Through Yoga in Venezuela | Brirkellia Álvarez Franquiz

“Yoga has given me a greater awareness of myself, the cultivation of mindfulness, and inner harmony.”

Brirkellia Álvarez Franquiz is a lawyer and Hatha Vinyasa teacher (RYT 200), and the founder of Todos En Yoga in Caracas, Venezuela. Her journey began at a community event, where she was struck by the calm focus and grounded presence of the practitioners around her.

Growing up amid economic hardship, Brirkellia felt called to social justice work early in life. She has collaborated with international organizations advocating for human rights and views yoga as a complementary tool for resilience and empowerment.

Through Todos En Yoga, she brings accessible classes to communities navigating economic instability and chronic stress. Participants report reduced anxiety, relief from physical pain, and a strengthened sense of solidarity. What began as a physical practice has evolved into a network of support: neighbors connecting with neighbors, building empathy, and shared strength through yoga.

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Yoga as a Tool for Community Healing in Bangalore: Sowmya Ayyar

“Yoga gave me a calling—to develop myself through the capacity of yoga to serve in a multitude of ways in the world.”

Sowmya Ayyar is the Founder-Director of Prafull Oorja Charitable Foundation, a Bangalore-based NGO dedicated to training yoga therapists to serve vulnerable populations. With a background in social work, she witnessed firsthand the toll of trauma and systemic inequity and the profound potential of yoga as a tool for both individual and collective healing.

Introduced to yoga through her mother and great-grandmothers, Sowmya later returned to the practice during her own healing journey. Restorative yoga became a refuge, eventually leading her to pursue teacher training and therapeutic applications.

Through Prafull Oorja, yoga reaches children with special needs, incarcerated individuals, and women in rural communities. Programs support motor skill development, trauma recovery, and self-agency. Across each setting, yoga is offered not as a luxury, but as a practical tool for dignity, stability, and empowerment.

For Sowmya, the heart of the work is unity. By equipping communities with accessible therapeutic tools, she nurtures environments where compassion and resilience can take root.

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Making Yoga Accessible in Lebanon: Sandy Boutros

“Introducing yoga to the communities I work with is like an introduction to the Self. The hardships of life make us forget to embrace the body, breath, and mind. Yoga brings back self-awareness and self-love.”

Based in Beirut, Lebanon, Sandy Boutros is a yoga teacher and founder of Koun, an NGO committed to expanding access to yoga in underserved communities. Her initial curiosity about yoga emerged through her interest in psychology and philosophy, particularly the spiritual dimensions explored by Carl Jung.

After experiencing the transformative power of yoga on retreat, Sandy returned home with a renewed sense of purpose. She observed that yoga in Lebanon was often concentrated in affluent communities, leaving many without access. In response, she began volunteering in refugee camps and migrant centers, offering trauma-informed classes to individuals navigating displacement and economic hardship.

Through Koun, she partners with local organizations to provide sustainable programming in shelters and community centers. For her students, yoga becomes a way to reconnect with the body, regulate stress, and rebuild a sense of agency.

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Creating Space for Healing in Indigenous Communities: Roxanne Sanchez

“Yoga is a lifelong practice of deepening your connection to the breath to be fully present and aware—aware of your contribution to the present moment and how you choose to cultivate peace for all.”

Roxanne Sanchez, known by her native name Toh’tcho-OhLonē, Baby Hummingbird, Sister of WolfClan, Guardian of the North and Wisdom Keeper of the Earth, is a yoga teacher from New Mexico whose work bridges Indigenous traditions and yogic principles.

Yoga entered her life at age 21 while navigating chronic pain and injury. Breathwork and meditation became powerful tools for managing physical discomfort and deepening self-connection. Over time, her practice evolved into a lifelong path of healing and service.

Recognizing a need for accessible wellness spaces in her rural community—where poverty, addiction, and historical trauma are ongoing realities—Roxanne opened a studio rooted in cultural respect and inclusivity. She offers classes to Indigenous communities, people of color, and individuals seeking healing from intergenerational trauma.

Her studio serves as a safe, nonjudgmental space where movement, spirituality, and cultural identity coexist. For many, yoga becomes a bridge—honoring traditional healing practices while embracing contemporary tools for well-being.

Moving Forward, Together

These stories are just a glimpse at the teachers and organizations working every day to make yoga more accessible, inclusive, and responsive to community needs.

At Yoga Alliance, we remain committed to listening, learning, and collaborating with practitioners around the world who are using yoga as a force for connection and care. When yoga is rooted in community, it becomes more than individual transformation; it becomes collective impact.

To learn more about how yoga professionals worldwide are fostering healing and resilience, visit yogaalliance.org/love.

In moments of collective trauma, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul often move like a single body; sometimes tense, sometimes trembling, but rarely disconnected. While Minneapolis has been the epicenter of national attention following the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the reverberations are deeply felt across the river in St. Paul and outward into the suburbs. What emerges, again and again, is a quieter story of care: practitioners holding space, neighbors watching out for one another, and communities choosing service over spectacle. 

In St. Paul, that care looks intimate and immediate. Amy DePoint, an acupuncturist and mother living in a diverse neighborhood describes the past weeks as a movement from shock into a kind of weary flow. “We’re exhausted,” she says plainly, “but we’ve also found a rhythm in the community.” That rhythm is punctuated by fear that feels too close to home. ICE vehicles idling near schools, neighbors disappearing from daily routines, children instructed to run to safe houses if something goes wrong. The contrast between what residents witness on their own streets and what they hear on the news is jarring. “What’s being said doesn’t match what we’re seeing,” she explains. “It’s not agitators. It’s moms and grandmas texting each other, saying, ‘They’re staking out my neighbor’s house! Can you keep eyes on it?’”

“The contrast between what residents witness on their own streets and what they hear on the news is jarring. ‘What’s being said doesn’t match what we’re seeing,’ she explains. ‘It’s not agitators. It’s moms and grandmas texting each other, saying, They’re staking out my neighbor’s house! Can you keep eyes on it?’”

Inside her acupuncture practice, that disconnect shows up somatically. Patients arrive depleted, angry, scared. One man admits he’s consumed by thoughts of retribution. Another can’t sleep. The work, she says, becomes about nervous system repair, sometimes without ever naming it as such. “I try to bring every session back to gratitude, even briefly. Otherwise we’re completely fried.” Anger, she believes, isn’t the enemy; it can be a bridge from fear into action, if it’s held carefully. 

Care also extends beyond clinic walls.Through networks like Acupuncture Without Borders, practitioners across the metro, and even from out of state, are quietly organizing pop-up treatments, ear acupuncture kits, and in-home support for people sheltering in place. The emphasis is on safety, structure, and sustainability. “If I get followed or detained, I can’t help anyone anymore,” she notes. So roles are distributed. Some patrol. Some deliver food. Some offer bodywork behind closed doors. Showing up, she says, looks different for everyone. And that’s the point.

“…roles are distributed. Some patrol. Some deliver food. Some offer bodywork behind closed doors. Showing up, she says, looks different for everyone. And that’s the point.”

-Amy DePoint

If St. Paul’s response is grounded in proximity, the suburbs are responding through scale and steadiness. In Plymouth, about 25 minutes from Minneapolis, Honest Yoga studio owner Nicole Byars describes a different but connected energy. There are no protests outside her doors, no sirens echoing through class. Instead, there’s a palpable heaviness and an unmistakable pull toward community. Studio attendance is up more than 40 percent from last year. “People aren’t coming to argue or vent,” she observes. “They’re coming to be together. To process quietly. To move.”

Her studio has long been trauma-informed in practice, if not in marketing, and right now that shows up as familiarity rather than novelty. Teachers lean into repetition, silence, candlelit rooms, what one instructor called “yoga as comfort food.” The goal isn’t commentary; it’s containment. “Our job isn’t to narrate the news,” Nicole says. “It’s to give people something steady when everything else feels chaotic.” 

Service, however, is where the suburban response reaches outward. The studio has mobilized support for local and Minneapolis-based food shelves and partnered with grassroots organizations DHH Church delivering groceries to immigrant families afraid to leave their homes. A recent donation-based Himalayan sound healing event directs all proceeds to a Colectivia Bilingue, a bilingual shared relief fund providing emergency rent assistance and housing support. “If you’re going to make a statement about your values,” Nicole states, “you have to put service behind it.” 

“If you’re going to make a statement about your values, you have to put service behind it.” 

-Nicole Byars

What’s striking is not just what these communities are doing, but how thoughtfully they’re doing it. Both practitioners speak to the tension of wanting to help without appropriating, of acting without centering themselves. Listening first. Showing up when asked. Acknowledging fear without amplifying it. “Everybody has a different capacity,” Amy reflects. “Showing up might mean patrolling, or it might mean making soup, or it might mean holding someone’s hand while they cry.” 

Across the Twin Cities, that ethic of care is threaded with a deeper awareness. What’s happening now is not new for many communities of color, even if it’s newly visible to others. There is anger in that realization, and grief. But there is also resolve. Monarca Rapid Response Line is providing nonviolence training rooted in the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are circulated alongside somatic practices and sound baths. Singing protests and candlelit yoga classes coexist. Fear and hope sit side by side. 

Minnesota has been here before, thrust into the international spotlight with the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The state was forced to grieve publicly and compelled to organize quickly. What feels different this time, many say, is the infrastructure of care already in place. Mutual aid networks. Wellness practitioners willing to step beyond their job descriptions. Studios and clinics that understand healing as communal, not transactional. 

From St. Paul kitchens where neighbors keep watch, to Plymouth studios quietly filling with breath and movement, the message is consistent: the Twin Cities are holding each other. Not perfectly. Not without exhaustion. But with intention, humility, and a fierce love of neighbor.