Hi everyone!
I’ve been down long-winded paths and several stays in mental hospitals throughout the years. Being involuntarily put in these places made me angrier and life unmanageable. Throughout the years, I’ve been turning to yoga and other safe coping strategies to work on the mind/body connection. This has helped me tremendously in managing my emotions, and nowadays I’m feeling stable enough to make plans for the future ☺️. I would like to lead free community classes in my local area of Maryland. My Latinx parents immigrated here, and I’ve seen how this difficult journey has affected them and others like them. During these painful times, it would be an honor to provide my neighbors with a safe space to move and feel.
I’m looking forward to learning and sharing this experience with you all <3
All the best,
Cele
Hello All,
I am super excited to be embarking on this new journey of becoming a Registered Yoga Teacher. Little Rock, AR is where I currently live and I was born and raised here. I first felt safe in the space of yoga in the year of 2023 when I was deployed. They offered yoga sessions to us every week and I always left out of the session lighter than when I came in. I recognized the powerfulness of the practice then. Ever since, I have searched all over for yoga sessions near me to participate in, watched YouTube videos to have my own solo sessions at home and even considered becoming an instructor myself. This is the year I make that dream happen. It is time that I embrace being a healer and helping not just myself, but others regulate their emotions through yoga. I look forward to meeting everyone.
Hello everyone!
My names Morgan (she/they) I am plains Cree and Metis originally from Treaty 7 in Alberta but I currently live on Vancouver Island In BC, now. I am a registered acupuncturist and herbalist, I first did a YTT 200 program in 2017 and fell in love. The last few years my yoga practice has fell off a bit, I am looking to get back into teaching, I work a lot with addictions and mental health at a few different facilities. Hoping to bring a yoga practice into those facilities soon.
thanks so much! and excited for this to begin 🙂
Greetings everyone!
My name is Rachael, and I’m reaching out from Henderson, Nevada, though my roots trace back to Southern California. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to join the PYP teacher training program and to learn alongside individuals from diverse backgrounds and communities across the globe.
For the past fifteen years, I've served as a licensed school psychologist working with justice-involved youth navigating the complexities of the juvenile system. Throughout this time, my personal yoga practice has been instrumental in regulating my own nervous system and addressing the impacts of trauma in my life. This program resonates deeply with my calling to serve vulnerable populations—including veterans, incarcerated individuals, and first responders—communities I have been intimately connected with through personal experience.
I'm filled with gratitude and anticipation as I embark on this journey of learning and growth, with the intention of bringing this training and wisdom back to serve my community in meaningful ways.
Hi from Chicago! I've had YTT on my goals list for probably a decade now, and mainly because I find it hard to locate a class and teacher who I resonate with. I have a hard time with the watered down McYoga style of this practice that presents itself in our modern world. I am a former high school visual media and expressive arts teacher in Chicago Public Schools and have transitioned to working with women with incarceration histories, so finding PYP feels right. I'm excited to learn, and grow, and dream, and stretch with you all! ...Apologizing now for Brandi, my pittie mix, who might be making appearances on my yoga mat during live sessions 😉
Hi everyone, My name is Shailaja Akkapeddi. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. I am originally from India.
I have practiced yoga off and on for several years now. I usually seem to come back to my yoga practice when I need it most...and it always helps me, almost immediately to feel better. Through this training period, I am hoping to create a regular and consistent practice for myself.
Much of my career has been working with resettled refugees. I have always though about how I'd like to see yoga accessible to refugees and vulnerable populations with trauma. I am not quite sure how but that's my goal. To find a way to offer it to people who need it most.
Looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow and learning and sharing with all of you
Hi everyone 🙂
My name is Alexandra and I'm learning with you from the Kansas City area. I am a working single mother of a 10-year-old daughter, and I started my yoga practice while pregnant with her. My path to this point, like so many, is complex and winding but I was introduced to Prison Yoga Project by my mother; she sent me a link to this organization while I was in relationship to a man in prison. I am deeply moved by and called to this mission for so many reasons from my traumatic childhood, my own legal and substance abuse struggles as a juvenile and young adult, and the wild ride of a healing and reclaiming expedition I've been on, to my growing understanding and intolerance of inequality and systemic injustice in our legal system and society as a whole. I've always considered myself a perpetual student, in all areas of life, so it's taken me a long time to consider participating in a teacher training and the thought of facilitating stretches me so far outside my comfort zone. But that's why I'm here, to grow, and stretch, and create alongside all of you.
Namaste
Hello from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
My name is Mike, and I am originally from Poland. I coordinate and deliver a wide range of programs for incarcerated youth and adult women. I have had the pleasure of working alongside the Prison Yoga Project for the past year. After seeing the benefits of the program and how well it is received by our vulnerable population, I decided to take the instructor course to help make it more accessible for our residents.
As the course sessions take place during my work hours, unfortunately I may not have many opportunities to join online.
Hello everyone, my name is Sandra (she/her) and I'm connecting with you from Golden, Colorado. I've been practicing yoga for about 25 years now. I have to say yoga has been with me through the best and worst parts of my life. It has been the anchor that brings me home to myself each and every time. I have gotten through hard times and have healed old wounds through this practice. As a woman who has experienced trauma in my life I've been through lots of therapies from talk therapy to different modalities of somatic therapies. I truly believe that the physical/somatic work I've done has been the most profound in my healing.
I've always wanted to go through a YTT program but it has never felt like the right place or time. Several months ago I started following Prison Yoga Project on social media and it was all I could think about. For me this feels like the exact right place and right time to do this. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to dive even deeper into yoga and it's philosophies and to hopefully come out and be able to share it in a compassionate trauma informed way. I look forward to meeting you all soon!
Hi everyone,
I am coming to you from Sacramento, CA. I am honored to be among so much passion for this work and join you all in this adventure. I have been in and out of yoga for many years and value the emotional healing it has provided me. I have been wanting to do this training for quite some time and finally everything aligned. I have been working inside prisons in Northern California for the last 12 years, teaching and directing drama therapy-infused Shakespeare, Social Work/Human Services classes, and Theatre Arts. Many of the students that I have known over the last decade have talked about the profound healing they experienced from PYP, and I loved hearing their transformative stories. I also work as a therapist at a non-profit in Sacramento that provides services for the re-entry and justice-impacted population. I am eager to learn more tools to bring to both of the populations I work with to address the trauma that lives in their body.
Hi everyone, my name is Kaylee ☺️ and I’m from Litchfield, NH. I’m incredibly grateful to be here today. My journey to this mat hasn’t been easy or traditional. I’ve faced addiction and spent time incarcerated, chapters of my life that once felt like they defined me. But through healing, accountability, and growth, I’ve learned that those experiences don’t limit who I can become; they strengthen me. Yoga became a space where I found stillness, self-forgiveness, and connection to myself again. It taught me how to breathe through discomfort, on and off the mat, and that changed everything for me. Today, I’m here because I want to share that healing with others and help create safe spaces for people who feel broken, lost, or unseen because I’ve been there too. This training represents a new beginning for me, and I’m honored to walk this path with all of you 🫶🏽
Hi! My name is April Edwards and I am from Lexington, KY. I am also a person with lived experience with trauma and have battled addictions for most of my life. When I found recovery and as I worked through my trauma in therapy and with lots of introspection and shadow work, I realized that my trauma wasn't just stored in my mind, it was also stored in my body.
I started digging into the mind-body connection and became a little obsessed, so a couple of years ago we founded a nonprofit in KY that aims to integrate holistic wellness modalities like yoga, massage, tai chi, breathwork, nutritional counseling and other services into treatment for substance use disorder and trauma. Too often we treat these conditions from the neck-up and forget that we are a whole system, leaving the body out of the conversation. Eventually we also plan to serve in jails and prisons.
I had battled with dissociation and a hyper-vigilant nervous system for a long time, so a huge part of my healing process was getting back into my body and feeling safe there. Yoga and movement helped me do that. I want to be able to share that with other people, especially those that are typically marginalized and suffer from systemic harm.
Looking forward to this class and to meeting my classmates!
Hi everyone, my name is Mikaela, and I’m joining from Sacramento, CA 🤍
I’m a mother of two and a trauma survivor, and my own experiences with domestic violence were a big part of what led me into healing work. Yoga—especially vinyasa—has been a grounding and empowering practice for me, and I currently practice at a studio close to home.
Professionally, I work with individuals court-side, both pre- and post-incarceration. I hold a bachelor’s degree in counseling with a specialty in substance abuse and am currently in school working toward becoming an LMFT. Having grown up with a father who spent much of my childhood in the prison system, I’ve seen firsthand the trauma, pain, and ripple effects incarceration can create for individuals and families.
I’m drawn to this training because I believe deeply in healing-centered, trauma-informed spaces, and I want to support others in easing suffering and reconnecting with themselves. I’m grateful to be here and to learn alongside all of you. Hola amigos!!
Hey, everyone! I've enjoyed reading more about you all on this forum, and I'm so excited to have the opportunity to learn and share space alongside you in the coming weeks and months.
My name is Amileah (they/them) and I've lived in NYC for over 5 years, though I'm originally from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I am currently completing the clinical work in my final semester working toward my my counseling Master's degree. I came to this work by way of a combination of my own lived experience and volunteering in crisis and suicide response with LGBTQ+ adolescents. Currently, my work is in a research setting with LGBTQ+ at risk or living with HIV and those who use substances. I also intern at a practice where I serve queer, trans, and gender-expansive clients, with a focus on eating disorders and trauma.
I've been practicing yoga myself for over a decade, and have recently felt called to learn facilitation and teaching skills, especially as an opportunity to deepen my somatics-based counseling and therapy work. More than anything, I am excited to grow and learn from a wider community of people doing similar work grounded in social justice and equity principles.
So grateful for you all and excited to get started!
Hello everyone, my name is Holly I am joining from not so sunny England!
I have worked in prisons for 25 years now, predominantly in the female estate as a PE Instructor. I took part in the first cohort of trauma informed yoga training with prison yoga project and really enjoyed the learning and energy of all the tutors. I have been delivering weekly yoga in prisons ever since. I now work as a National Tutor or PE & Activity at our Prison Service Training Centre and am joining this course to assist the roll out of the PYP trauma informed yoga for our core curriculum of PE Instructors in training......and hoping to gain some self healing along the way!
I have invested heavily in helping others heal their trauma and potentially used it to mask or not heal my own. I enjoy how present I feel and being able to show up for my family more following a yoga practise. I am not fully there with making it habitual or as a regular as I would like, I am hoping this will be what drives that.
looking forward to this journey🧘