History: The Roots of Our Service

HISTORY
Founded by Sarahjoy Marsh in 1998 and incorporated in 2002, Living Yoga (LY) began as an outreach program for the incarcerated. The program’s purpose at that time was to provide helpful tools through the practice of yoga for dealing with stress, tension, addiction, and anxiety for people who would otherwise not have access to yoga.
Sarahjoy saw the program as two-fold. Inmates in prison had little access to resources to actually begin the long, slow process to transform themselves to select healthy lifestyle choices and ways of being. She also saw this same pattern after their release. The result was a revolving door of human misery, community unrest and squandered human potential.
Beginning with Sarahjoy, and then quickly including several volunteers, LY developed to not only bring yoga to the incarcerated, but to provide community connection. LY believes, “we are all the same underneath,” and with that the organization’s hope was that if it brought community members together, through service and volunteerism, it would connect community members working to heal and improve their lives along with community members dedicated to serving their community. Through this process, LY could work to break down misperceptions and fears about incarcerated populations and at the same time create a source for healthy community for those living within or exiting correctional facilities.
Since our founding, Living Yoga has worked to dismantle and breakdown stereotypes or misperceptions regarding marginalized populations. In the last twelve years we have increased our programming to target populations that may later face incarceration—if intervention and prevention tools were not provided.
We now have programs (started in 2001) for youth and adults in drug and alcohol recovery, domestic violence shelters, and at transitional service centers for those accessing housing, mental health, or prostitution alternatives services. In expanding our services to include more populations, our goals were to provide preventative services but to also create opportunities for access to safe, supportive, and healthy community—the yoga community.