By Kyla Pearson
Ordinary black chairs line the walls to make space for seven young women. Surrounded by chalkboards, fold-up tables, a ladder and a fridge, the ladies lay stretched out on mats in what is a rather unorthodox setting for yoga.
The air is silent but for the buzz of traffic on Rideau Street and the soft voice of Jessica Earle-Meadows, who leads the women through Hatha yoga in an all-purpose room at the Heartwood House.
Earle-Meadows is the youth co-ordinator at the Ottawa Radha Yoga Centre and an instructor of the Yoga for Youth At-Risk program.
This outreach initiative began in the fall of 2004 to make yoga accessible to the city’s marginalized youth. Last year, over 650 local young people took part in the program.
“We are trying to give youth a safe space in a nonjudgmental setting where they can relax,” Earle-Meadows says.
The Heartwood House class is a one-hour session conducted as a service of the Hopewell Eating Disorders Support Centre of Ottawa, one of over a dozen agencies involved with the program.
A non-profit organization, the Ottawa Radha Centre relies primarily on donations to fund the initiative for vulnerable youth.
The program has received modest government grants and subsidization from the Radha Centre.
But it depends mainly on an annual silent auction to generate the funds necessary to pay two co-ordinators. This year’s auction will be held Nov. 17.
As for the classes, it is up to the individual agencies to provide things like equipment and a location.
“We really appreciate organizations like the Radha Centre that fund the yoga program because we’re able to offer and benefit from the classes, and it hardly costs us anything,” says Lucyna Neville, co-founder of the Hopewell Centre.
Hopewell asks its participants to make a two dollar donation to cover the costs of renting a space.
Through a variety of community partnerships, the Yoga for Youth At-Risk mandate includes pregnant youth and young parents, low-income youth, those with mental health challenges or legal troubles, and the homeless.
The Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa Drop-In Centre has offered classes on and off for the last three years, says the centre’s co-ordinator Liette Duguay.
A new session of drop-in classes started at the beginning of October.
While the first week attracted only one participant and the second none at all, week three saw five individuals come out.
“In the past, response from the youth has been very positive,” Duguay says.
“It takes a while to get the ball rolling, but we’re going to try until we’ve exhausted every strategy to get kids to attend.”
Earle-Meadows says classes at the eating disorders centre usually involve women in their late-teens and early 20s, but some of her classes involve children as young as seven.
The downtown services and drop-in centre is for youth 12 to 20 years of age.
Duguay says the co-ed classes offered there are an “awesome” way for the youth to relax.
“We see youth with a lot of stress that don’t necessarily put much energy into developing positive coping strategies,” she says.
“The yoga classes are a place they can relax and learn skills they can then apply in other areas of their lives.”
Despite the unusual setting, as the session at Hopewell draws to a close, an air of calm fills the room.
“Yoga has given me so much and helped me figure out a lot about myself,” Earle-Meadows says. “I’m hoping participants get a taste of that inner confidence and relaxation.”