Category: Adaptive Yoga

A variety of classes for Veterans, their families, and our communities to partake and enjoy!

I have volunteered these past couple of years to do Veteran’s Day Yoga classes to help support the Veterans Yoga Project.  I first heard about the VYP on Baxter Bell’s Yoga for Healthy Aging website several years ago.  One of the co-authors of that blog Nina 
Zolotow mentioned that day about this project, and how yoga teachers across the country were doing special classes for Veterans and donating to this non-profit.

Part of my outreach to the community is to teach various themed classes that benefit various non-profits.  In the past we’ve done food drives for the United Boards of Missions, T-shirt collections for making t-shirt diapers for Haiti, and a Yoga for Food drive for filling up local food pantries.  Teaching classes, collecting money for this effort really resonated with me, and my church was fully supporting doing this.

So every year since then I’ve taught classes during Veterans Gratitude Week, and more recently did a fundraiser class for an In Memory – Light a Candle – during Memorial Day.  Part of the funds help Veterans attend retreats, and provide scholarships toward becoming a yoga teacher themselves.

Last year, I got a call to come up to the local VA and do some chair yoga classes for them.  I figured then it was about time to get trained in the protocol of the Veterans Yoga Project.

I love the 5 tools of mindful resistance, and find myself regularly incorporating the principles in that methodology in my regular chair yoga and beginners yoga classes.

• The Breath
• Mindful Movement
• Guided Rest
• Meditation
• Gratitude Practice

Now that COVID-19 is upon us, all the classes throughout the nation for Veterans and their families have to take on a different view.

The leadership in the Veterans Yoga Project, asked all of us MRT – Mindful Resistance Trained Yoga teachers to step up and volunteer their time to provide daily content for offering Online Streaming Classes on either Facebook or Online Zoom platforms.

I volunteered to teach Adaptive Yoga, done seated on the chair, with strengthening and balance work done behind the chair (or seated).  Go check out Veterans Yoga Project Online Streaming Classes facebook page,for their extensive offerings of yoga classes for the Veterans, families and our communities (I think that covers about everyone).

I’m teaching today at 5 PM Central, Adaptive Flow, so pop on over about that time to see the class!  Here’s the schedule for today.

The light in me, honors the light in you!
#veteransyogaproject
#yogawithgaileee
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