Florida A&M is
the first university that offers the Yoga Gangsters certificate. Terri Cooper,
the founder of Yoga Gangsters offered students a free two-day workshop at FAMU
recreation center over the weekend.
During the workshop
about twenty students learned basic yoga poses and they became in touch with
their own personal trauma.
Yoga Gangsters is a
non-profit organization that empowers the youth in inner cities through
practicing yoga.
Cooper started the
organization after accepting her past dealing with drugs and an unstable
childhood. She struggled with an addiction and she was a chain smoker. In her
late thirties she was bartending on South Beach and realized her life needed to
change.
“Yoga saved my
life…I hit rock bottom for a moment. I found yoga and it helped me get my life
together and it helped me find my purpose,” said Cooper.
Yoga Gangsters
started after Cooper became a yoga teacher and she wanted to give back to kids
who grew up with the same upbringing as herself. She started volunteering at
jails and schools and her classes started getting bigger.
“I wanted to share
it with kids just like me, kids that had a lot of abuse or trauma in their past
and kids that didn’t know how to manage themselves,” said Cooper.
Kimi Walker, a FAMU alumna and student health services health
educator took the Yoga Gangster training in Miami. Walker said she was
the only African-American woman within her age group in the training. Cooper
says most of the people in her training are yoga teachers, schoolteachers, case
workers, people in trauma and people in non-profit organizations.
Walker said she was drawn to Cooper’s studio 305 Yoga
because “They had a karma yoga program, the yoga of self-service, and apart
that was her non-profit Yoga Gangsters.”
She said, “I called Ms. Tanya Tatum up and I told her I went
through certification and I told her about it.
We have to bring this to FAMU. We have to get more African-Americans
involved in yoga. ”
She said, “I thought FAMU is a really great place for it.
I’m really excited that we’re the first university. I’m really excited that
we’re the first HBCU and hopefully in the future they’ll be able to branch out
to more HBCUs”.
Participates were encourage to push boundaries with their
bodies and to become self aware with their personal issues. “We never allow
ourselves to be in our emotions,” Cooper said. “Our society doesn’t allow us to
process it(emotions) We start to pile it on.”
During training participates engage in an activity called
the inner circle where the person can address their inner everyday battles
through non-verbal communication. This
activity allows people to vent and realize that they are not the alone in their
life experiences.
Brittany Claybrooks,
a graduating senior in health care management at FAMU from Detroit, MI
said the training excited her and that she began to become more self-aware.
“I guess it forced me to relate to people but it also forced
me to be honest about my situation to complete strangers and sometimes that’s
not always the easiest especially since you’re on campus…,”said Claybrooks.
Walker hopes participates can bring the training back to their
communities and share the training with others.
Cooper said, “This is the future of our program. If we can
get this on more college campuses, I think that would be great. I mean that’s a
dream come true and to be at an HBCU is even more profound.”
For more information on Yoga Gangsters, please visit
yogagangsters.org.
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