Raising Awareness on the Mat: Central Kentucky's Community Slow Flow Yoga

 The Sanskrit Meaning of the word Yoga means union and that is exactly the intention behind the Community Slow Flow Yoga summer class series sponsored by the Central Kentucky chapter of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Centered, a new alternative and holistic health center in Lexington. The class series is not only a union between mind and body and between KFTC and Centered, but it’s a connection between social justice and the yoga community.

The community yoga class is an opportunity to provide activists, organizers, and community members a space to practice self-care while providing a space for yoga students to become connected to the community and social justice as a way to enhance their practice.

Central Kentucky KFTC member Josh Saxton envisioned the class as an opportunity to explore the concepts of internal and external justice. “The care and protection of our inner physical, emotional, mental and psychic and spiritual environment is shown to be directly correlated to our thoughts of the outer natural environment. By taking care of our inner landscape, we restore our harmony with the outer natural world. Our internal pollution is as dangerous to our health and wellbeing as environmental pollution. Yoga helps to balance our consciousness and bring an awareness which can be projected outwards to the greater world which we are a small part of.”

The first yoga class in the series took place on Sunday, June 23^rd and participants filled the room to capacity with 27 yogis and yoginis on their mats. The class was donation-based and students who attended the class had the option of using their class donation to pay membership dues to KFTC for the year or to renew their dues.

Central Kentucky KFTC recruited eight new members, had one member renew her dues, and talked to a roomful of people about the organization and the work we do.

Additionally, Centered welcomed many new faces to their studio for the first time. 

                       Mark your calendars for the rest of the series:

July 21

August 25

September 22

Location: Centered at 309 North Ashland Ave.
Time: All classes begin at 11 a.m.

Instructor: Joshua Saxton has been sharing the union of mind and body through yoga with our local community since 1998

Why this is, in addition, good organizing: While the marriage between KFTC's work on yogic philosophy compliments our practice, it's also a good example of organizing. This workshop raises money and engages new voices in our work and it merely took solid partnerships and good conversation. Often, we operate with the idea “bigger is better”, but in this case we created a simple event that yielded amazing results. Josh Saxton has been a long-time KFTC member and had been thinking about ways that his personal yoga practice has been affected by our physical environment and what it means to work towards “external justice”, while also exploring the way in which he cares for himself, or how he practices “internal justice”. Enter Central Kentucky KFTC. Josh had an amazing new space opening for healing arts and it made for a perfect partnership and a great example of building community, membership, and partnerships in a really efficient, effective way.

We hope to see you on the mat. Namaste.