Growing out of Sage Yoga Co. in 2019, Calm Mind Foundation has instituted various programs for youth diversion and youth outreach, for adults in recovery, and more.
Our Mission
By offering yoga and meditation sequences that resonate with people who lack access to conventional classes, we are reimagining yoga’s role in the broader community. In consultation with social service partners and counseling professionals, we purpose-design programs that address experiences specific to the groups we serve.
In recognizing the importance of long-term engagement, we pursue sustainable, fully-funded initiatives so that we can consistently offer our programs to the communities we serve on an ongoing basis, free of charge.
The Calm Mind Foundation is authentically rooted in community: we do more than deliver packaged yoga to “underserved” communities – we listen to our yogis and learn from their practices. This project gathers students from all backgrounds to grow collaborative new understandings of mindful living.
Yoga and mediation encourage self-awareness and reflection for everyone, but there’s no single ideal; the Calm Mind Foundation shares what we learn from these programs with the broader yoga community. And everyone in our programs come to find that forging positive connections with their bodies nurtures the calm minds that allow us to show compassion and empathy to others.
“Through sustained focus and meditation on our patterns, habits, and conditioning, we gain knowledge and understanding of our past
and how we can change the patterns that aren’t serving us to live more freely and fully.”
Program principles
The Calm Mind Foundation develops straightforward life applications for yoga and meditation sequences, avoiding inaccessible jargon and esoteric concepts.
Every program starts with a rubric assembled from five key imperatives: breathe, move, focus, relax, and reflect.
Instruction in each element develops a practice on its own terms and then pivots to a real-world application. For example, yogis learn the physical fundamentals of calm breathing and then reflect on how that breathing might serve as a strategy to deal with stressful situations.
We present yoga as inclusive by definition, and a practice that engages collaborative effort. Yogis in our programs learn that working in community is just as important as any individual calm mind.
We recognize the particular stressors each group faces and develop a practice that accommodates those experiences. This is a systematic effort that closely tracks the objectives of collaborating partners (social service agencies, recovery centers, juvenile courts, school districts), relevant counselors, and the broad experiences of our trained instructors.