Yoga Program to Incarcerated Youth & Community Empowerment

Hello, UpRising Yoga's Trauma Informed Yoga Training is March 2-4, 2018 coming soon! They always sell out so reserve your space.
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1/5/2018

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YFHT Trauma Informed Yoga Training

12/13/2017

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Dear URY Community,
Im writing you all with some tender emotions. As you may know, UpRising Yoga will be taking a temporary pause as we decided to take a break from our direct services in order to regroup, heal and recharge. Let me explain to you what that looks like and where things stand.
I'm pleased to report that the community yoga classes we established will be continuing on and SBCC will be scheduling them. The Probation Department decided to pause the yoga program at Central Juvenile Hall to respect the process of our transition and honor our commitments we established early on. I am working on this and yoga will return to incarcerated youth very soon!
As far as URY itself, we will continue to focus on the important stuff: self-care, healing for the healers, social and juvenile justice, prison reform and leadership initiatives. I will be working with the Board to determine how it can be structured more sustainably to meet its mission and collaborate with interested parties aligned with our cause. Please reach out with any ideas!
This has been a challenging process for me and for others, both emotionally and physically. It would be impossible for this to occur without some kind of apprehension moving forward. But I believe it is the right thing to do. URY will evolve into a better place regardless, but to me its more important that the movement that we started continues on. And it will. In your thoughts, in your words and in your actions.
Thank you all for your dedication and support for all that we do! Please stay in touch while URY is on sabbatical, and you can find me here or at Yoga For Healing Trauma. With this program I will be holding trainings and I have several upcoming speaking engagements to carry on our good work!
Gratitude and thanks to all of you who believe in me.
With much love and many blessings,
Jill Marie Ippolito

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Attuning To The Body by Marissa Goodhill

3/15/2017

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Body, mind, and spirit. In an ideal world, each would be precisely attuned to the others, operating in perfect balance with one another. But more often than not our minds tend to dominate, overpowering the yearnings of the spirit and the whisperings of the body. That’s why we do yoga. In yoga, we use the external self as a gateway to the internal self. We sweat, breathe, twist and balance with such intentional focus that our mind is forced to release us from its vice grip, if only for an hour. By the end of class, we’re so physically exhausted that we can no longer get in our own way — we let go completely and enjoy a few blissful minutes of savasana.

In the yogic tradition, the physical postures of yoga (known as asana) were intended as a preparation for meditation. And if you’ve ever experienced a particularly juicy savasana, you can easily see why. When we train ourselves to focus on the body, we cannot help but quiet the mind, and in doing so, allow ourselves access to something deeper. In other words, asana uses the body as a bridge between the mind and spirit. And that’s what makes the body such a rich resource for information about ourselves.

When I was 19 years old I fell in love for the first time. It was all-encompassing, intense, and fraught with drama from the start. I was so swept up in the passion of it all that I discarded the drama. But there was one thing I couldn’t discard: at the exact same time the romance began, I started breaking out into full body hives. This had never happened to me in my life, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. Doctors were of little help, prescribing creams, sympathy, and not much else. All I knew for sure was that my whirlwind love affair was quickly punctuated by full days spent writhing on my bed in misery, my whole body covered in painful, burning swaths of red, swollen skin. I felt disfigured and completely out of control.

It seemed incongruous at the time that falling in love would be coupled so closely with the worst physical pain I’d ever experienced. It wasn’t until much later I realized how apt that timing actually was. The relationship turned out to be deeply destructive. The intensity I’d initially felt swiftly turned from intoxicating ardor to consuming anxiety. I wish I could say the hives ended when the relationship did; but the truth is it took years before I could get what had turned into severe eczema under control. I never discovered what exactly triggered it that first summer. But I don’t think its synchronicity with my first love, soon to be my first heartbreak, was an accident. On some level my body sensed, and reacted to, a deep uneasiness hidden beneath that first flush of excitement. My body anticipated the emotional pain that my mind and heart were not ready to acknowledge.

"The body never lies.” - Martha Graham

Now, the truth is, I may not have been able to avoid that heartbreak no matter how well I’d tried to listen to my body’s warning cries. But on subtler levels, our bodies are trying to communicate with us all the time, to share the information it’s intuiting about our emotion and physical needs. It warns us when we’re overworked, dehydrated, or uneasy about a problem we don’t want to face. If we’re willing to look, it will show us where we’re contracted too tightly and where we’re stretched too thin. Where we need to get stronger, and where we need to surrender.

But being attuned to these signals is another story entirely. Our culture prizes mind over matter, and most of us have conditioned ourselves to keep a safe distance between ourselves and our
bodies. We exercise with loud music blocking out the sound of our breath, ignore the instinct to take a nap and drink coffee instead, eat sugar for energy when we really need water. So the process of moving the body intentionally — neither muscling through it, nor giving up the instant it gets uncomfortable — can be a revolutionary act. The sensations the body provides when we move through our yoga practice can tell us so much. In what postures or transitions does the breath flow easily, and where does it sharply break off? Where do we start to feel irritated in a pose, where does our mind start to wander, where do we berate ourselves? By simply noticing these things, we start the process of tuning in, of learning the language with which our spirit communicates to the mind through the body. Once we do that, though...the journey has just begun.

As we go deeper, we learn that just as the body is intuitive about what’s happening in the present moment, it can also act as a road map through our own histories. Muscle memory stores experiences, emotions, habits, fears and traumas — many of which we have no idea remain within us. Consider the natural physical reaction to shock or bodily threat: clenching the fists, pulling our knees into our chest, hunching the torso to guard ourselves in a fetal position. Then consider how vulnerable it is to lie on the floor with your hips splayed open, or to reach your chest forward while pulling your shoulders back. You’re exposed... and so are your emotional and energetic blocks. It can feel scary, uncomfortable, and even painful. But this is the work.

"The part can never be well unless the whole is well." -Plato

The word “yoga” literally translates as “union,” which makes sense when you realize that the goal of the practice is to bring all parts of ourselves — physical, mental, and emotional — into conversation with one another. The body is the first and most tangible place to start that process. But to truly converse with the body, we must do so with kindness. When we stretch our leg and the muscle screams out from tightness, that’s when we breathe more deeply into it, not curse ourselves for being inflexible. After all, if we can’t treat our own bodies with compassion, non-judgement, and open-mindedness, how can we hear what it’s telling us? And how can we bring those qualities to anything else we do or anyone else we interact with? This is the path to self-awareness and self-love.

So go ahead, stretch that hamstring, even — no, especially — if it hurts. You might just learn something.

About the Author: Marissa Goodhill

Meet Marissa Goodhill. She is our newest URY teacher and Blog Contributor and we are happy to have her.

Marissa is a Los Angeles based screenwriter, storyteller, yogi, and dog mama. She believes in the transformative magic of yoga, the strength of the human spirit, and the timeless power of storytelling to foster empathy, compassion, and connection where we need it most. She also believes in baked good. All the baked goods.

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Announcement: D'Lita Miller of Families Against Sex Trafficking to Present at URY Training

3/7/2017

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Our next Trauma-Informed Yoga Training is set for June 24-25, 2017!

D’Lita Miller, expert in human trafficking and Founder and CEO of Families Against Sex Trafficking, will be joining us as a presenter at our next training. She will be sharing her personal story and work against human trafficking, as she has made it her mission in life to free those bound by sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. With extensive knowledge of sexual exploitation and human trafficking, D’Lita aids communities through engagement, education, and empowerment. We are honored to have this amazing soul educating and empowering us.

Space is limited. Reserve your spot today here.

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Teacher's Spotlight: Fitzjoy Hellin

3/4/2017

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Please meet URY Teacher and Volunteer, Fitzjoy Hellin, who has been working with URY since 2012. In a sea of all female URY teachers, and a fairly female dominant profession, Fitzjoy makes a statement. Arriving on his motorcycle and leather jacket, he teaches almost every single week at Central Juvenile Hall. Fitzjoy offers the boys unit a sweet mix of masculinity, strength, and power in a way that is grounding and nurturing, a much needed dynamic in our culture, especially in our education of young men. We are so lucky to have him.

Q: How long have you been working with URY?
Fitzjoy H: I started working with URY a few months after completing a 500 hr. hath yoga training in September 2012.

Q: What is your favorite quote?
Fitzjoy H: "There are those who give with joy and that joy is their reward." by Kahil Gibran

Q: What is your spirit animal?
Fitzjoy H: I relate to elephants :)

Q: Who is your greatest teacher or mentor?
Fitzjoy H: My greatest teacher has been Tony Sanchez whom took me out of the heated yoga studios and took the mirrors away for practice.

Q: Tell us about how you began your yoga practice?
Fitzjoy H: After knee and back surgeries about 10 years ago, my running and martial arts practice routine did not seem appropriate anymore.

Q: What’s your mission as a yoga instructor?
Fitzjoy H: To bring enlightenment and some feeling of peace and easy to people's lives.

Q: Who are you trying to reach and why?
Fitzjoy H: I love beginners. They have no idea what they're getting themselves into... just getting one new yoga student to start a practice is the most important gift you can give any individual. I believe this creates a start to a better environment to live in.

Q: What life experiences have you gone through that influences your teaching the most?
Fitzjoy H: One is personal injury for sure, but equally important is the realization of self where you can find joy just being with self, and all the while being of service to others. Having worked in leadership in very stressful environments it is important to feel at peace when everything around you is not. In this state can you trickle that energy down to others around you.

Q: What do you love most about teaching yoga?
Fitzjoy H: That moment where someone gets a posture or understands what yoga is all about. This is a moment that is unexplainable in the curriculum of joy, which is why I love teaching yoga.

Q: Why is yoga so important for the times we’re living in?
Fitzjoy H: People need to take a step back once a day to come to self and realize all the noise is not that important. By taking a step back you can actually move forward towards the achievements you are trying to get to.

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New Community Classes in East Los Angeles Starting March 7th!

2/23/2017

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A few months back UpRising Yoga (URY) was the happy and thankful recipient of Lululemon’s Here To Be Grant, which is a community-based social impact program to create access to the healing benefits of yoga in underserved communities. We are excited to announce that with this grant we will be offering a new weekly yoga class in East Los Angeles at Centro Maravilla Community Center beginning March 7, 2017. As always, our community yoga classes are completely free and open to the public. You don’t need to sign up or even bring anything. All you have to do is show up! We provide the yoga mats, Spanish translation, and a warm and trained URY teacher to guide you through your practice. We are proud to partner with Los Angeles County Centro Maravilla. UpRising Yoga's office in East Los Angeles gave us a community to know and love and we are very excited to share our yoga program with this great group!

Join us on March 7th for this kick off class with Founder, Jill Marie Ippolito. This will be a special class and we hope to see you all there!

Thank you to URY Ambassador Brent Laffoon, Jackie Koch and Monica Currier from LuLuLemon Brentwood and Chloe Abraham and Julia Bowman from LuluLemon Malibu for their support our mission. It is the support of others generosity and kindness that allows us to do this work and impact the lives of others.

Print the flyer below and share with friends!

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February 06th, 2017

2/6/2017

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Hello, UpRising Yoga's Trauma Informed Yoga Training is March 2-4, 2018 coming soon! They always sell out so reserve your space.
Please Like Share Join www.uprisingyoga.org

Check out our video and Like Share Sign Up, thanks!

YFHT Trauma Informed Yoga Training

AWESOME VIDEO!

The Future of URY

Attuning To The Body by Marissa Goodhill

About the Author: Marissa Goodhill

Announcement: D'Lita Miller of Families Against Sex Trafficking to Present at URY Training

Teacher's Spotlight: Fitzjoy Hellin

New Community Classes in East Los Angeles Starting March 7th!

February 06th, 2017

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Hello, UpRising Yoga's Trauma Informed Yoga Training is March 2-4, 2018 coming soon! They always sell out so reserve your space. ​Please Like Share Join www.uprisingyoga.org

About the Author: Marissa Goodhill

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Categories

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Hello, UpRising Yoga's Trauma Informed Yoga Training is March 2-4, 2018 coming soon! They always sell out so reserve your space.
Please Like Share Join www.uprisingyoga.org