Tara Tonini slept with a shotgun. After months of being in a violent relationship, she found the strength to leave and get her own apartment, but her abuser was stalking her and threatened her life.
Sadly, Tonini’s experience isn’t unique.
In the United States, about one in four women will experience domestic violence during her life, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s extremely dangerous for a battered woman to leave an abusive partner, and those who are brave enough to do so often suffer from PTSD for years.
Tonini is now the program director of Exhale to Inhale, a nonprofit that brings free yoga classes to shelters and community centers that serve domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. It also trains volunteer instructors to lead trauma-informed yoga classes. Tonini credits yoga for where she is today.
Check out the video above and witness how the regular practice of yoga can help trauma survivors in tremendous ways.
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Tag: Yoga
It’s Not a Stretch to See That This Yoga Teacher Makes a Difference to At-Risk Teens
Just think back to the stress and anxiety of high school. Many teens need a little guidance to navigate the angst-ridden time, and one California teacher is proving that a little bit of stretching, meditation, and sticky mats can work wonders.
Erin Lila Wilson, the founder and executive director of RISE Yoga for Youth, is bringing a sense of peace and calm to at-risk high schoolers in the Bay Area, Huffington Post reports.
Take Alex Ramirez, a student at San Francisco’s Mission High School who got into fights with her mom and couldn’t focus in school. According to the RISE website, after joining Wilson’s yoga program, her GPA went from 1.6 her freshman year to an impressive 3.5 her sophomore year, and now she’s a 4.0 senior who’s in the process of applying to colleges.
“It helped me find a balance in life,” she said of the program. Alex said yoga has also helped improved her and her mother’s relationship because they practice yoga together.
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Alex’s story may be unique, but here’s why yoga for isn’t just for New Age hippies. Yoga promotes relaxation, mental focus and a healthy way to manage stress. And for teens who might come from rough backgrounds and difficult family situations, the sense of inner-calm that yoga brings might be just the solution. (You might remember our story on how meditation worked miracles for this inner city high school in San Francisco.)
Since its launch in January 2012, RISE Yoga for Youth has expanded to seven other at-risk bay area high schools.
“From the moment I started, I just totally fell in love with teaching teens,” Wilson told Huffington Post. “I realized that it’s such a gift to bring these practices to young people, because young people are so open and so receptive, and they can take these practices and these tools with them for the rest of their lives.”
Yoga for Youths?
Yoga isn’t just for grownups anymore. In Detroit, Danialle Karmanos came up with a plan to fight the childhood obesity epidemic by establishing a yoga program for young kids. She’s working with physical education instructors and other pros to build a network of volunteer yoga instructors for the Work It Out program, which brings yoga classes to kids at underserved schools in the area. She started in 2005, formed a non-profit organization in 2008, and since then has brought yoga to more than 3,000 kids in and around Detroit. The lessons of the class go far beyond basic stretching. Kids are learning breathing exercises, so they’re coping better with stress and anxiety. And they’re also developing healthy eating habits; 69% of students are already reporting changes in their diet.