Yoga Reaches Out

  • By onthemat
  • •
  • 25 Apr, 2016
  • •
When I first agreed to teach the nuns, it meant I would miss Yoga Reaches Out May 1. In actuality, this experience with the nuns in Burma was its own version of Yoga Reaches Out, and in many ways reflects a similar concept. How can we bring our love of yoga out into the world, […]
When I first agreed to teach the nuns, it meant I would miss Yoga Reaches Out May 1. In actuality, this experience with the nuns in Burma was its own version of Yoga Reaches Out, and in many ways reflects a similar concept. How can we bring our love of yoga out into the world, in a way that serves.
Yoga Reaches Out was created by Sarah Gardner , from Wayland, and I found it too late in 2013, but signed up in 2014. In 2015, I volunteered in both Boston and the Bay Area. What could be better? Right?
Yoga Reaches Out holds annual Yogathons in an expanding number of cities to support different children’s non-profits. One raises money in order to participate in a day of yoga, music and inspiration for a day along with 1000 other yogis. OTM teacher Sue Cushing is on one of the key committee members, Lorraine led a team in 2013 which I heard about too late, and Rebecca Pacheco is the MC this year, a role she’s played in the past. I practiced next to her in 2013 when she wasn’t on stage. I wonder if she remembers. We hadn’t met.
Other ways to support YRO is volunteering and holding donation classes. Teachers from all over the country, as well as beloved Boston based ones, teach in a fun round robin style for 2 to 3 hours in the morning, and again in the afternoon. Imagine 1000 yogis in Gillette’s Field House all committed to the same goal! Several booths surround the floor as well as a drawing in the noon raffle
Last year I volunteered YRO Bay Area. This was especially poignant because it is my hometown and YRO was raising money for Oakland/San Francisco Children’s Hospital, a place my sister Kassie was in and out of for the first 10 years of her life, due to being born with hydrocephalus. My high school friend Elise Collins was there, and we were also raising money for Off the Mat Into the World pioneered by Seane Corn, was the highlighted teacher. You will learn more about my connection to her in a later post.
Natalie Bartlett was a volunteer with me last year in Boston, and I planned to volunteer this year, but alas, karma brought me somewhere else. If you’d like to donate , any amount, you may do so here. It would be awesome to create a OTM Team next year. I promise it’s an awesome way to practice yoga “Off the Mat” from “On the Mat”.
 
 

On The Mat Yoga Blog

Heart~ Day #7 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • 03 May, 2020

“There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home—one that can only be seen with closed eyes; We can feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are. When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Hear is unveiled, we feel increasingly grateful for no reason—grateful to simply be.”

—John J. Prendergast, PHD, The Deep Heart  

SUN!~ Day #6 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • 02 May, 2020

Seems like it’s been rainy, windy, dreary for eons. Which may have helped us shelter inside a bit more. I remember reading years and years ago in a Seth book that weather can be influenced, and even created by mass human emotion. Why not? We are far more powerful than we currently acknowledge, and science is beginning to validate many phenomena that had seemed inconceivable before. Those seemingly endless days of “bad” weather seemed congruent with the emotional tone of covid her in New England. And now SUN! Glorious, warming, invigorating, hope-filled Sun! Today I will be outside basking and gardening and thanking. And I’m sure the whole neighborhood, and most of New England will go outside, stand with our faces to the sun and breathe a huge healing breath of joy. And maybe the collective energy of that will resonate out across the word as a promise of brighter days to come.     


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