SANTA FE COMMUNITY YOGA CENTER

Santa Fe Community Yoga strives to reach under served populations who do not typically have access to yoga and other mindfulness practices due to financial or other social barriers. Our Yoga in Schools Program strives to serve schools that cannot typically afford specialty programs. Many schools in our area suffer from a lack of funds with which to bring mindfulness programs to children. Many studies are showing that mindfulness practices have astounding benefits for children, including increased academic performance, a decrease in perceived stress, decrease in poor behaviors (including bullying) and building life long tools for managing stress.

We have by-donation classes daily and have the lowest drop-in rates in town to minimize financial barriers. Our specialty offerings include Yoga en Espanol, Gentle Yoga, Yoga for Beginners and Prenatal Yoga. These specialty offerings allow us to reach populations that do not typically have access to yoga. Our goal is to find more funding so we can expand our community outreach, specifically through our Yoga in Schools program. Our funding comes from fundraising classes and events, as well as through schools that can afford to pay for our program's overhead costs. Currently, all of our schools are on a partial or full scholarship, so we are limited in the amount of schools we can bring our program to.

We have the space and the teachers that we need in order to bring yoga to various under served populations. We have the training available to teach Yoga in Schools practices to teachers - both yoga teachers as well as school teachers.

The amount of clients we have served since we began measuring this number has increased from 319 in 2013, when we began measuring this number, to 1,913 in 2017. We have expanded our Yoga in Schools program from operating in 1 school in 2013 to operating 5 classes in 4 schools in 2017. We are seeking to expand our clients served to over 2,000 in 2018 and wish to reach at least 6 schools through our Yoga in Schools program in 2018.