Who We Are

Street Yoga is a non-profit organization that teaches yoga, mindful breathing, and compassionate communication to youth and families and their caregivers struggling with homelessness, poverty, abuse, addiction, trauma and behavioral challenges so they can grow stronger, heal from past traumas, and create for themselves a life that is inspired, safe, and joyful. Our programs are based on solid evidence that yoga helps with physical well being, depression, anxiety, trauma and PTSD.

Mission

Street Yoga gives youth and their caregivers the tools to overcome early life trauma, through the sharing of life-building mindfulness and wellness practices grounded in the ancient healing principles of yoga. We serve by helping them create a sense of true home in their own bodies, minds and communities

photo credit: photography by Campbell Salgado Studio

Core Values

Commitment and Service

• We embrace the relentless and dedicated commitment necessary to carry out the organization’s mission.
• We are committed to building positive relationships within our organization, with our partners and donors, and the community of people we serve.
• We are dedicated to the teachings and practices of yoga as a way to live in the world.
• We will strive to resolve conflicts with full openness, and will seek solutions that best meet the needs of everyone involved.

 
Dignity and Acceptance

• We will treat the people we work with, the people we serve, partners and donors, volunteers, and others with dignity and respect.
• We will accept one another’s viewpoints and perspectives as possibilities to further grow, as team members and as an organization.
• We listen to, understand, and value respectful and mindful speech when we disagree.
• We will act with empathy to meet our own needs and those of others to the fullest extent possible, and always own the consequences of our own actions.

 
Truthfulness

• We will provide truthful information about our mission, team members, program activities, use of donations and finances.
• We are available and responsive to members of the public who express an interest in the affairs of our organization.
• We promise a congruency between what we say and how we live in the Street Yoga mission.
• We respect and promote the oneness in all.

 
Community

• Street Yoga values community, and our services intend to cultivate community by promoting the values of friendship, sharing, respectfulness, truthfulness, cooperation, and caring, to help individuals work together as a group.
• We value the essential contributions of the communities we serve, acknowledging that we cannot move our organization and mission forward without them.
• We know it is the work, dedication, passion, and inspiration of our volunteers, staff, leaders, partners, trainees, and participants that makes Street Yoga viable and strong.

 
Celebration and Gratitude

• We are thankful for the time, dedication, opinions, hard work, and contributions of every member of our community.
• We are grateful for the opportunity to do this work.
• We celebrate those who assist us in furthering our mission, our successes and each member’s contributions.
• We foster a culture of gratitude.
• We recognize that joy and humor are essential elements in our work.

 
Loving Kindness

• We strive to perform all actions with loving kindness.
• We recognize the common humanity and shared Light in every person and strive always to act with compassion.

 
Quality & Discipline

• We strive to offer the best practices of mindfulness and yoga to our customers, and clients.
• We strive to capture, incorporate and promote evidence-based practices in all our programs.

 
Safety and Privacy

• We strive to provide a safe environment for both the teachers, and our clients.
• We strive to meet the clients where they are - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
• We will value, respect, and protect the privacy of our clients in all our programs.

Who We Serve

Our trained volunteers work with 22 local partners bringing their clients weekly yoga and wellness classes, serving 1,000 individuals per year. Some of our local partners include Outside In, Pioneer Special School, Community Transitional School, Janus Youth Programs, Morrison Child and Family Services and the Donald E. Long Youth Detention Center. Street Yoga’s goal is to build skills that create a healthy foundation for dealing with challenges in life, including:

• Helping to develop healthy bodies by improving strength, balance, and flexibility
• Teaching healthy tools for self-soothing in times of anger, stress and sadness
• Teaching the skills of intention, breathing, self-awareness, focus, and perseverance
• Inspiring self-confidence, self-reflection, and mindful, creative expression
• Fostering spiritual awareness and connection to community
• Healing the body and mind in the wake of trauma
• Teaching interpersonal skills, self-management, and goal setting

 

Teacher Training

Street Yoga offers a 16-hour weekend Teacher Training all around the country. The training teaches compact, portable mindfulness practices, self-soothing exercises, appropriate boundary and touch, age specific info and much more. Trainees learn how offering wellness practices to youth can help them overcome their trauma and challenges and teach them how to care for themselves. The training especially targets yoga teachers, social workers and school teachers. Some trainees become Street Yoga teachers; others learn how to weave these practices into their therapy work or the classroom. In 2011, we trained over 500 yoga teachers to teach yoga to youth in social service environments; we offered weekend workshops in Portland, Seattle, San Diego, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Tucson, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Boston, Bend, OR, Salt Lake City, Belfast, Spokane, and Toronto, Canada.

Our History



Mark Lilly founded Street Yoga in 2002 by organizing a handful of yoga teachers to teach yoga at a day shelter and a school serving homeless youth. Lilly says his life was deeply bettered by yoga. He started Street Yoga partly because of a song by Neil Young. And there's a line from that that goes: “We were giving, that's how we kept what we gave away. “To keep what yoga gave him, Mark Lilly said he had to give it away as fast and as much as possible. Street Yoga hired its first staff member this January 2008 and made the decision to grow from a volunteer fueled grassroots organization to a small non-profit with an active board, solid infrastructure, supported volunteers, comprehensive programming and ambitious development plan.