Thank you for visiting my fundraising page!

Since deciding to pursue a yoga instructor certification, I've been lucky to get involved with Living Yoga.  This organization's dedication to improving people's lives through yoga is amazing and I am proud to be a volunteer. 

I'm currently working with them on the Yogathon event - with the hopes of making this inaugural year successful - and will complete their teacher training in July.  I have been to one of their classes at Lifelines in Vancouver to observe and was blown away.  The attendance to the class was fantastic and I was excited to see how seriously the students took the yoga.  I cannot wait to take on teaching a class solo.

My goal for the Yogathon event is to complete 20 yoga classes during the months of July and August and to raise $2,000.  To help me achieve this I'm hoping that you can support through a donation to Living Yoga. If you currently do not have a charity that you support, or are looking to have a big impact in many people’s lives—I highly recommend that you donate to Living Yoga.

The benefits of yoga are many and include stress management, self-awareness, impulse control, mindfulness, and distress tolerance. By providing the necessary life skills developed through the practice of yoga, many are better able to contribute both to the communities in which they now live and to the community to which they will return to or re-enter.  Past offenders can adopt new behaviors and patterns from which to make safer decisions, teens can learn to make choices about their bodies and their actions from more grounded places, victims of abuse can re-connect within themselves and take steps towards empowerment and trauma healing, and addicts can overcome craving and desire as well as unhealthy and harmful behavior.  These changes within individuals not only affect them personally—but everyone they come into contact with—their children, family, neighbors, employers, customers—and most importantly, their community.

As a child, I found that I had to divorce myself from my body and feelings.  For me, yoga has been a part of an amazing awakening in my life as I come back to myself and really understand what it means to live.

----Inmate from Oregon State Penitentiary, January 28, 2009

Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support my fundraising efforts.

Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

Namaste,

Emily