Mandela Yoga Project Inc

Our mission is to scale the delivery of a new system of free yoga that is designed to address stress, racial trauma, and chronic health conditions in public health crisis communities and is offered by residents themselves who are well-trained and well-compensated yoga teachers. We believe that access to yoga — a proven therapeutic modality — is an issue of social justice.
We work to disrupt the mercantile model of yoga and yoga teacher trainings that center white practitioners and teachers in and from predominantly affluent communities.

Mandela Yoga Project was created to center people of color as healers of the stressors that result in chronic diseases like diabetes & hypertension and that disproportionately affect Blacks (16.4% vs Whites 11.9%) and prematurely claim the lives of Blacks at twice the rate of Whites (37.8% vs 18.8%). As early as 2013, a growing body of research revealed that racism is a determinant of health. A 2015 meta-analysis of epidemiological data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013 found that racism was associated with poorer mental health, including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other negative outcomes.