Namaste, Centretown. Ottawa yogi Chelsea Love will be greeting participants in a fundraising yoga class at Centretown’s Pure Yoga on March 1. Proceeds from the class will help fund yoga education for Ayda Abdallah, a resident of the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar and a teacher with the Africa Yoga Project.
The project gives youth in Africa the chance to “become leaders in their communities.” It offers free yoga classes at locations such as schools, orphanages, hospitals, jails, HIV/AIDS support groups and rural villages in East Africa. It also provides yoga teacher training to marginalized figures, mostly young adults from under developed areas in Kenya, in order to empower them socially and financially.
Love, whose real name is Chelsea Vickers, has been familiar with the project since it began in 2007 – when co-founder Paige Elenson moved to Africa and helped bring the Baptiste form of yoga to Nairobi.
Baptiste Power Yoga, also known as Power Vinyasa Yoga, is a style practised in a heated room that aims to build strength – both of the body and the mind.
“It’s powerful yoga,” says Love, “and while you’re sweating, they use mantras (words or phrases repeated to help maintain concentration during meditation) that help bring you to become a more empowered person.
“They’re using it in Nairobi right now to help kids get out of the slums and to empower themselves – to become stronger, leader-type people.”
She says this type of yoga helps support the children’s mental, emotional and physical health, as it has done for her. Love explains that the mental and emotional exercise puts people more in touch with their bodies and helps them develop a sense of clarity and a calm mind. This clear mind allows youth to focus on positive action. The physical exercise gives them a platform to express themselves and let out any pain or angst.
Love says the project also gives adults in Africa the chance to become yoga instructors and though the job is not high-paying, she says these teachers are glad to have a job, particularly one that helps bring positive change to their communities.
Ichih Wang, one of the only Power Vinyasa teachers in Ottawa, says unlike many Westerners, African yogis don’t hesitate to participate in the classes.
“(In Africa), they have so little and yet they have big hearts,” she says. “And regardless of their circumstance, they don’t ever think that they can’t do something.
“If you tell them to go up in handstand, they don’t stand there like a Westerner would and say ‘I can’t do this.’ They say, ‘why wouldn’t I be able to do this?’ “
Though in areas such as Zanzibar (where the focus of Love’s fundraising, Abdallah, lives) Love says it can be harder for a yogi to simply say ‘I can do this’ – especially when they’re the only teacher on the island.
“She’s in an environment where there’s no yoga,” says Love. “I feel it’s really important that she takes more training, so it takes her out of her environment and gives her that strength and that drive to keep going and affect more and more people.”
Love and Abdallah met when the two of them were participating in instructor training with AYP. Love says teacher training costs $4,000, which, along with other fundraising, helps pay for the free yoga classes for Kenyans. She says it is often unaffordable for those outside of Nairobi, who have to pay additional fares to travel to the city for training. This is why the project offers scholarships for people like Ayda, who wanted to make a difference in her community, but could not afford any formal training.
Prior to their meeting, Love says Abdallah was a self-taught yogi. Abdallah taught yoga in Zanzibar for two years before applying for a scholarship with the project and going to Nairobi to train.
“I just want to give her the opportunity that I had as a teacher,” says Love, explaining that while she has been able to train all over the world, Abdallah only had the one opportunity to increase her teaching skills.
However, she says Abdallah could improve the health of the people of Zanzibar further, through yoga, if she could afford another chance to learn. This is why Love is fundraising for her.
The fundraising class, held at Pure Yoga on Bank and Gilmour, will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m. It will be a vinyasa-style class (minus the high temperature), will be set to an “urban beat playlist” and will be suited to all levels of yoga experience.
“We have some time at our Centretown location in the afternoon, and so we were just like ‘Great, come on in,’ ” says Jenn Conlon, manager of Pure Yoga’s Westboro location – referring to Love’s request to hold the fundraising class at the downtown studio.
The suggested donation for the class is $5 to $10, cash only. Participants are also invited to donate used yoga clothing and books, which will be given to yogis in Africa (through the project) – many of whom Love says are practising yoga in jeans, with no mat, due to a lack of money and resources.
“I’m really proud of Paige, and I’m really proud of my friend Chelsea,” says Wang. “Continue to practise and keep sharing your light. ‘Cause the magic never ends . . . There is no ‘I’m not ready.’ “