Mission
We Deliver Accessible Yoga Alternatives in the form of yoga and mindfulness classes, trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness trainings, yoga and mindfulness interventions for anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction, and adaptive yoga programs for those with medical conditions that require medically-sensitive yoga.
We teach the tools that build each student’s Essential Life Skills toolkit, that help them to recognize their inherent duty to everyone and everything as their own, and that empower them to make a difference in our shared world.
DAYA Foundation is on the front lines of service where yoga, social justice, ecology, and consciousness intersect. DAYA partners with organizations, educational centers, and places of transformation to further our focus and specialization in somatically-oriented, trauma-informed, engaging conversations intended to transform individuals, society, and our world.
DAYA Yoga studio also provides public yoga classes and yoga + mindfulness trainings online where all levels of students are welcome. From active yoga to restorative yoga to trauma-informed, inclusive, accessible, medically-sensitive yoga, DAYA community is a vibrant hub of yoga for the entire community.
We uphold the principles and ethics of the yoga tradition and encourage all of our students to do the same. Self-study and self-inquiry are integral to freeing ourselves from the human conditioning that continues to catalyze oppression, marginalization, hatred, violence, anxiety, depression, addiction, and social injustice.
It is possible to for any one of us to be a part of the solution. Yet, we can’t only rely on our most courageous, impassioned leaders. We must, together, recognize our capacity to contribute to the continuation or the discontinuation of suffering.
Please join us in this revolution of consciousness.
May all beings be respected, kept safe from harm, and have access to the tools that enable their lives to thrive, and to be of service.
We teach the tools that build each student’s Essential Life Skills toolkit, that help them to recognize their inherent duty to everyone and everything as their own, and that empower them to make a difference in our shared world.
DAYA Foundation is on the front lines of service where yoga, social justice, ecology, and consciousness intersect. DAYA partners with organizations, educational centers, and places of transformation to further our focus and specialization in somatically-oriented, trauma-informed, engaging conversations intended to transform individuals, society, and our world.
DAYA Yoga studio also provides public yoga classes and yoga + mindfulness trainings online where all levels of students are welcome. From active yoga to restorative yoga to trauma-informed, inclusive, accessible, medically-sensitive yoga, DAYA community is a vibrant hub of yoga for the entire community.
We uphold the principles and ethics of the yoga tradition and encourage all of our students to do the same. Self-study and self-inquiry are integral to freeing ourselves from the human conditioning that continues to catalyze oppression, marginalization, hatred, violence, anxiety, depression, addiction, and social injustice.
It is possible to for any one of us to be a part of the solution. Yet, we can’t only rely on our most courageous, impassioned leaders. We must, together, recognize our capacity to contribute to the continuation or the discontinuation of suffering.
Please join us in this revolution of consciousness.
May all beings be respected, kept safe from harm, and have access to the tools that enable their lives to thrive, and to be of service.
Founding Program
At the heart of our most transformational project is our founder, Sarahjoy Marsh, who has been teaching yoga in prisons for over 20 years. Together with a team of highly trained yoga professionals, she teaches 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training Programs in prisons, training adults in custody to become yoga teachers on the inside.
Lessening violence and the overuse of segregation and isolation as a behavior management tool and reducing mental health episodes, prisons become places of recovery, personal and interpersonal development, and for adults in custody to discover all of the arts of yoga, including karma yoga, service to their community.
At the heart of our most transformational project is our founder, Sarahjoy Marsh, who has been teaching yoga in prisons for over 20 years. Together with a team of highly trained yoga professionals, she teaches 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training Programs in prisons, training adults in custody to become yoga teachers on the inside.
Lessening violence and the overuse of segregation and isolation as a behavior management tool and reducing mental health episodes, prisons become places of recovery, personal and interpersonal development, and for adults in custody to discover all of the arts of yoga, including karma yoga, service to their community.
Vision
The DAYA Foundation vision is to:
- Deliver Accessible Yoga Alternatives to institutions, centers, organizations, or facilities that have the capacity to address the public health concerns of our world including ecological and humanitarian catastrophes. We partner with organizations to deliver these services to their community members. We’re particularly interested in those agencies and organizations that support the vulnerable, marginalized, isolated, or under-served members of our community and that passionately engage community members of privilege and means to get involved in the conversation and collaborative solutions.
- Deliver Accessible Yoga Alternatives to those challenged by the financial constraints of living on disability, overwhelmed by medical bills or health care costs, or those for whom a household budget can not readily include the costs of “regular” yoga classes.
- Deliver Accessible Yoga Alternatives to those struggling with addiction, anxiety, or depression.
- Deliver Accessible Yoga Alternatives by providing ongoing training for allied health professionals to study the arts of asana, pranayama, mindfulness, meditation and the psychology of yoga to incorporate into their existing professional practice. Being on the frontier of the field of yoga therapy, we will also endeavor to train qualified yoga teachers to integrate the tools of yoga therapy into their teaching or their private practice. Additionally, we’ll train laypersons who are interested in bringing yoga and yoga therapy to students via our outreach programs.
- We see ourselves as participating on the front line of an ever-growing social justice movement: the movement toward a socially just community in which all members have access to the life tools that would enable them to thrive.
- Yoga teaches fundamental life skills.
- These life skills transform our mental and physical health.
- These life skills make us better individuals, family members, and community members.
- All members of our community deserve access to the life-enhancing practices of yoga.
- All members of our community have something to teach us about life, human suffering, and human potential.
- When community is created, healing happens, for it re-knits our experience of belonging.