A Public Health Crisis Systems Solution
Piloting in Healthcare Settings Since 2022
Scaling delivery of a peer-led, trauma-responsive, neighbourhood-based yoga intervention led by community residents themselves.
The aim is to improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
The Mandela Yoga Project supports the nervous systems of people of color who face deadly disparities in health outcomes resulting from the ongoing trauma of the American Public Health Crisis of Systemic Racism — a people whose bodies have been exploited for gain since “20 and odd negroes” were brought by a Dutch ship to Point Comfort, Virginia in 1619.
About Mandela Yoga Project
The mission of Mandela Yoga Project, Inc. (MYP) is to scale the delivery of a new system of free yoga that is designed to address stress, racial trauma, and resulting deadly disparities in public health crisis communities, and is offered by residents themselves who are well-trained and well-compensated Mandela Yoga Peer Facilitators. We believe that access to the ancient Indian practice of yoga - a proven therapeutic modality - is an issue of social justice. We have created this integrative health intervention as a solution to the American Public Health Crisis of Racism. Pilots show potential to improve health outcomes for patients and reduce costs for patients and providers.
The Mandela Yoga model is peer-led, neighborhood-based, trauma-responsive, and accessible to all bodies, including those with limited mobility. The 45-minute, standardized Sonya's Sequence includes breathing and postures proven in clinical settings to affect blood glucose and blood pressure positively and is specifically designed to be practiced without props or special clothing. Sonya's Sequence is the group of poses and breathing exercises named for the founder's late sister who died prematurely at age 54 from complications of diabetes - a curvy black woman who did not feel welcome in the yoga studio system.
MYP works to disrupt the exploitative mercantile model of yoga and yoga teacher training that centers white practitioners and teachers in and from predominantly well-resourced communities. Instead, MYP equips people of color with chronic health conditions who live in low-income communities with the tools to become MYP Peer-Facilitators - greater agents of their own self-healing and facilitators of self-healing by their neighbors.
Our first intervention partner was a federally-qualified health center in the Spanish-speaking, "immigrant city" of Lawrence, Massachusetts
What We Do
Named for Nelson Mandela who transcended circumstances of
white supremacy and oppression in South Africa, harnessed contemplative practice and championed racial reconciliation.
We envision a world where those affected by the American Public Health Crisis of Racism are offered tools to heal their own communities with the proven integrative health benefits and emotional wellbeing of peer-led yoga that is offered - without regard to income - where they live, work, worship, play, and receive their healthcare.
THE MANDELA YOGA HEALTH INTERVENTION
Piloting in healthcare settings and with health systems, public health, and research partners since 2022, the Mandela Yoga integrative health intervention aims to explore the feasibility and acceptability of pairing a standardized model of culturally-resonant, peer-led, trauma-responsive practices of yoga and breathing to reduce disparities in premature death and chronic health conditions that disproportionately impact people of color. MYP’s systems alignment research is shaped and iterated on by patients in public health crisis communities themselves alongside academic researchers and physicians.
MANDELA YOGA IN KENYA AND RWANDA
In July 2023, Mandela Yoga Peer Seed Teacher and Peer Facilitator Trainer Keyona, Thought Partner & Peer Facilitator Trainer Emily, and volunteer Lynn embarked on a journey to Berwina, Rwanda and the Kibera area of Nairobi, Kenya to share Sonya’s Sequence — the series of yoga postures and breathing practices designed to offer forty five minutes of communal rest amongst a group of peers.
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“Practicing Mandela Yoga has helped me to be a better priest. When I used to pray, I feel like I was maybe not feeling anything. Now I use my breath work and movement and become very present in my prayers and feel a closer connection to God.”
- Father Theodore Hakizimana,
Ritsuro Parish, Rwanda
YOGA VIDEOS
FOR SAN QUENTIN PRISONERS
Mt. Tamalpais College and MYP began to collaborate to create Mandela Yoga Studio at San Quentin Prison — a virtual studio in the form of a library of high quality yoga videos featuring yoga teachers of color offering practices that speak to the specific needs and conditions inside the prison..
Our Supporters
Made possible by major funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, our fight to make the self-healing potential of yoga accessible is also made possible by the initial support of 337 contributors to the various giving campaigns since the first GoFundMe in 2018.
MYP's founding institutional supporters included: The Foundation for a Mindful Society (publishers of Mindful Magazine), Yoga Alliance Foundation, and The Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation. We remain grateful to our generous individual contributors Steve Phillips & Susan Sandler, Kat Taylor, Lynn and David Eikenberry, and Sara Blutinger.
As we propel toward sustainability with more fee-for-service engagements with federally-qualified health clinics, we are proud of and grateful to have the support of The Boston Foundation, the New Commonwealth Racial Equity & Social Justice Fund, the Reliant Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc. and other institutions.
