Hello,
My name is Jeremiah Holland. I live in Berkeley, California and work in Vacaville, CA at California Medical Facility, a California State Prison. I am the Recreation Supervisor at CMF. I develop and program health and wellness classes in the gym, and organize able-bodied and disability sports for the population. I am trying to create and support a group of incarcerated yoga teachers. This small will help me teach yoga inside the facility. This is our beginning.
I offer a blessing for the new day by John Odonohue:
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
I look forward to meeting you.
Jeremiah Holland
Hi all! It was great to meet everybody last week! I am so glad that I signed up for this class! I'll go ahead and post my intro that I shared last Thursday. Please reach out if you want to connect between classes! I'm at slpeterson@sdsu.edu or cell/text: 619.559.6646
I am 56 years old, my pronouns are she/they, I am clean and sober for 19 years, and I live in San Diego, CA.
My first introduction to trauma-informed practices was back in the late 80's/early 90's when I went to massage therapy school in Boulder, Colorado. We called it "holistic healing" and "body-centered therapy" back then. I was in the process of coming out as a lesbian during the AIDS crisis at that time. The government took a long time to respond to the AIDS epidemic, and there was a lot of misinformation about what HIV/AIDS was and how people got it. A lot of my work was promoting healthy touch and reducing stigma around HIV/AIDS at that time. I grew up in a very conservative, religious environment in South Dakota and used drugs and alcohol to cope from a young age. I identify as a trauma survivor. I always tell people that all the trauma-informed practices that I promote, I have tried myself!
I was living in Iowa City, IA in the late 90's and went back to school to get my master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling while I was there. Afterwards, I moved out to Oakland, CA and worked for the California Department of Rehabilitation for over 16 years. I worked with lots of different people with different disabilities to help them find employment. That's when I first started working with youth and adults who had been involved in the criminal justice system. Oakland is also where the recovery community scooped me up and saved my life!
I'm now a professor at San Diego State University in our Rehabilitation Counseling Program. I work closely with our academic support program for our students with criminal justice involvement, Project Rebound. That's how I found out about Prison Yoga Project.
I have a pretty regular meditation practice and have done yoga on and off for about 20 years. I shared in class that this little 8 pose yoga practice has been my go-to series when I want to start up my yoga practice again: https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/health/higher-ground/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=onsiteshare
The yoga we did last class opened my heart! I know I am in the right place! This class is a perfect balance to the academic environment that I find myself in now. I watched the video by Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa this week https://vimeo.com/502814704/4270ae9f86 and I'm so excited for these opportunities to connect yoga with research to advocate for more trauma-informed yoga in our prisons.
Much love and big hugs to all of you! See you in class!
Sonia
Hi everyone! My name is Melissa Rushefski and I use she/her pronouns.
I live in San Francisco-- the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ohlone/Ramaytush peoples and I am a person in recovery. I quit drinking on March 12, 2021, and I soon discovered the vibrant, beautiful, transformative spaces that exist in RECOVERY communities. In early recovery, I read "quit-lit" books, listened to sober podcasts, laughed, and cried on countless support calls, and surrounded myself with people who were also making big changes in their lives. I soon realized that this was my life's purpose-- to heal myself and empower others along the journey of recovery.
In June of 2022, I joined The Phoenix, a national nonprofit organization, as the Bay Area Program manager. Right away, I went to work building a fun, safe, inclusive, and accessible sober active community. I am proud to offer free programs for anyone with 48+ hours of sobriety, led by Volunteers with a deep connection to our mission. I am excited to offer free fitness, wellness, social, and music programs for people in recovery, sober curious folks, and sober allies.
Yoga saved my life-- it allowed me to feel safe in my body, and from that place, I rebuilt my life from a solid foundation. I am taking the Prison Yoga Project Yoga Teacher Training to be able to share this practice that has given me hope and allowed me to come home to my body.
🖐️ I would really like to get together in person with Bay Area students from this training. Please let me know if you are interested in gathering once or twice a month at a local cafe or library. We can study together and then hang out or grab some food afterward.
My favorite yoga pose is a forward fold.
Melissa Rushefski
860-372-8476 text me
mrushefski@thephoenix.org | www.thephoenix.org
Hey everyone!
I am beginning to tune more deeply towards this space after time away participating in the "end of life" care for my dad. This is the first time I have felt called and able to write since he transitioned so while this intro kinda seems like an essay, it was really just a practice I found cathartic. It's been amazing to read through what each of you have shared so while I felt it was important to take some time to introduce myself, this novel of an intro might contradict pieces of playful person I am.
I am so glad to share this space with you all. Two days before this training kicked off, I lost my dad. I am learning that grief is not an orderly experience. It is wild and disorderly. I resonate with the terms "wild" and "disorderly" in the way I show up in this world. It was an honor and gift to be an integral part of his end of life care and damn it's hard too. Each day I was with him I took note of the moments of joy, sorrow, humor, and pain that someday I will look back on to enrich my relationship and understanding of the ways in which this experience has cracked me open. I am learning to hold space for the complexity of diverse emotions we humans have the gift to experience in any given moment, day, and lifetime. The way of yoga as a healing centered modality blends fluidly with how I feel when stepping onto a yoga mat, that invitation to begin again. I want to deepen my experience and understanding of what it means to begin again, and again, and again and again. The pain of loosing my dad has been amplified by love. I am here to show up in community and collaboration because I feel the various ways we amplify yoga as a healing centered modality can be even more amplified through community love too.
In my final days with my dad, I would lay out my yoga mat and breathe with him and in those small shared moments, time did not exist. Like grief, the practice of yoga cracks me open in timeless ways too. I am curious about amplifying the practice of yoga "on and off the mat," because I feel that when I am faced with life, my practice of yoga is the "pause" that empowers me to choose how I respond to life. I am here to get curious with a community of people who are doing the work to transform how we "respond" to ourselves, the world, and each other with greater awareness. This is important to me because I feel like we live in a world that has given up on holding space for everyone to be seen and be seen as human.
My life as a Seattle resident is a great example of living in a community where most people are not seen as human. Hiding behind the mystical mountain and rivers everyone thinks about when they think "PNW" are disproportionally high rates of people living with the experience of "homelessness," and the unjust complexities that may come with this lived experienced Like grief, living in Seattle puts me in direct relation with the polarities of being human. So many and too many of my neighbors labeled by society as "homeless" go to bed each night on the cold, wet concrete.
To me living in a place where it is acceptable to "walk over" a person laying on the street feels like giving up. I am here to collaborate with a community that acknowledges the variety of unjust systems and modalities that do not support the whole person. A community who amplifies resiliency over giving up. I am curious about the ways in which healing centered modalities we will practice and discuss can transform the way I show up for both myself and community in a way that empowers us all to feel human and be human.
In part, this is what led me to work with the Downtown Emergency Services Center of Washington where I have been a Permanent Supportive Housing Case Manager. DESC emphasizes the importance of "meeting people where they are" and in choosing to work alongside DESC, I choose to work alongside the most vulnerable populations without setting "toxic" expectations of who each person "should be." While the work is not perfect, I tell people that my job is to create space where people are invited and reminded that they are human. I do not say this glamorously but to emphasize that as a Case Manager I feel many of the "supportive systems" in place are fragmented, broken, and totally not supportive because they do not address "the human, the whole." When I feel broken, the practice of yoga has reminded me I am whole and so are my clients and so is everybody else. I am inspired to share this space with a community of people who are doing the work to radically transform the way we approach social justice work and justice because broken systems do not give people a chance to be "whole."
I acknowledge that as a white woman the way I share space and show up is crucial to the way "justice" can be rewoven into the fabrics of humanity. This is unfortunate but the truth. While I do not need to take up more "space," I do have both an obligation to bring awareness to the injustice and to understand my place in it. As a human with complex layers emotion, experience, trauma, and all things human, I feel an obligation to live a life where I continue to do the inner work that transforms how I show up as a human alongside community. I am curious what the world would feel like if the people being stepped over were uplifted and had autonomy over how they too show up in this world. Whether the focus be mass incarceration or the homelessness crisis, I am honored to have this opportunity to be see and be seen in this journey of learning, listening, sharing and understanding modalities that impact the experience of being human in this wild and disorderly world.
Greetings everyone,
My name is Natasha and I'm the descendant of two Jamaican parents, born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I moved to the United States in my early twenties and I'm married with three children. I'm the founder and owner of Dubwise Yoga and a Founding Partner and Member of The 3rd. I've had a personal practice since 2000 and began teaching in 2018. I'm currently a health studies student leading yoga classes in-person and online.
I offers trauma informed yoga, I'm passionate about disabilities, mental health and mindfulness practices being readily available for all, most importantly Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). Prior to teaching I spent several years working with those who have developmental disabilities. I eventually became a CNA and had the pleasure of working at Craig Hospital with those who experienced a spinal cord injury and/or traumatic brain injury as well as the neurosurgical ICU at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.
I later became a certified hatha yoga instructor and alumni of Satya Yoga Cooperative, an Accessible Yoga teacher and ambassador as well as a registered yoga teacher (RYT500) with Yoga Alliance. I completed Skill in Action's – Yoga + Social Justice 300hr yoga teacher training, as well as level 1 and 2 adaptive yoga training with Mindbody Solutions. I became a certified LoveYourBrain yoga instructor, facilitator and joined their training team in 2021 supporting and sharing the benefits of yoga and meditation with the TBI community. I contribute to their yoga teacher trainings as well as their six week Mindset programs for those who have experienced a traumatic brain injury and their caregivers. I'm also currently completing Skill in Action’s 75hr continuing yoga teacher training program and Prison Yoga Project’s yoga teacher training.
I currently reside on Susquehannock, Nentego (Nanticoke) and Piscataway Territory, known as Columbia, Maryland.
Hello, I just navigated this space! I am Nerissa Buot from the Philippines. I am a mental health practitioner in a government-operated drug treatment and rehabilitation facility in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. In my workplace, most of our clients were incarcerated and had been through many experiences where trauma is so real. I am learning a lot from this shared space, from the ideas and shared experiences of everyone. Hopefully, I will be able to bring insights and lessons to our clients so that they, too, will be given a chance to claim the space and life that they never had.