"Yoga is for Everyone" ~ by the original gangster yogini liberation hustler, tamara lee ~
The First Episode
Yoga Girl SF was a project from the mid 2000's in San Francisco, where i taught yoga on the streets as a performance art/collaboration to demonstrate the power of yoga as love in action/seva ~ my name is Tamara Lee and i was the O'G 'yoga girl' ;) lol!
i mean this as no offense to the widely known instagram phenomenon Yoga Girl Rachel Brathen. i simply like to clarify the history here because sometimes people have been confused because she really embodied and branded the name in a far more accessible and 'successful' manner. And truly 'Yoga Girl' isn't an appropriate or accurate label anymore, but art is a process and it made sense back in the day.
The mission here was very different than the modern Instagram yogini parade of pretty pictures of girls in bikinis on beaches doing yoga poses, (not that there is anything wrong with that, just to be clear) in that the alter ego "Yoga Girl" was started as a way to demonstrate that yoga is powerful way to commune with anyone especially folks living on the streets and labeled 'mad', alcoholic or addict. Yoga was used here as a vehicle to express love and union with the 'untouchables' of SF at that time, who were my neighbors and friends. It was also shared with people who were willing to participate in a practice like this publicly to uplift the vibe of whatever corner we decided to throw down our mats, as was the case with this first filmed participant.
(The website domain used to be yogagirlsf.com which eventually was discontinued and relocated to FB https://www.facebook.com/yogagirlstreetyogini/ around 2008 i think.)
This effort to bring yoga to folks who might not normally have access was filmed and videos are posted on that page now and the Modern Mystic Yoga Academy You Tube channel. The message, hopefully, was that anyone can do yoga, and yoga can be practiced in any clothes, on any street corner, under any influence, without any props or fancy yoga gear!
i was teaching yoga at the time in SF, as well as shining shoes and living in the Tenderloin so i was privy to seeing that the population in my hood wasn't getting the exposure to yoga the way i was. i also was often asked for money when i was outside of my apartment and as that i was young and barely getting by myself, lacking in expendable income, i thought what else could i offer them? It was then i decided to just try to do yoga in the streets with folks, as that i didn't have another venue and because i knew many active addicts wouldn't show up for classes at prescribed times anyways. This was the beginning of pop-up yoga classes and it was actually quite a radical notion at the time. Now yoga is far more widespread and mainstream and not as rare as it was then or before. And to think people said it was just a trend!
Anyway, i plan to share more videos from this experience here now to revive the power of mutual aid and the power of voluntary actions to share tools of transformation within any neighborhood you live in. The truth is that everyone suffers and everyone is seeking happiness, no matter what socio economic class, addicted or not addicted state they are in and we all might have something to offer that could add value to each others' lives and thereby relieve the perceived need for government (stolen money funded) institutions such as welfare, food stamps, etc. i try to prove through my own example and through honoring others who voluntary share resources with people lacking, that people are generous actually given the choice. This helps support the arguments against anarchy as a viable and in fact enlightened social arrangement for living in societies.
People benefit by feeling empowered and inspired about life and yoga is just one of many tools of Self-Empowerment.
