Thank you for celebrating Pride with us
By Alana and Megan
Some of the attendees after class
This weekend, nearly fifty people joined us to move and connect at our first community fundraising class and social event. Held in June in honour of Pride Month, Celebrate Pride raised funds for local 2SLGBTQIA+ affirming space Spectrum.
Together, we raised $785.00 for Spectrum. This includes:
$400.00 in cash collected at the event which Alana then donated to Spectrum
$100.00 raised by our volunteer Brenda who sold handmade yoga bags at the event and donated the proceeds
$285.00 in direct donations to Spectrum from our attendees and supporters
A huge thank you to everyone who came out on their weekend to celebrate with us!
We had such a wonderful turnout and events like this aren’t possible without you - the support and heart of our community. We also want to extend our sincere gratitude to Forbes Motors for donating their space.
Alana and Sandra host Celebrate Pride
The yoga practice
Our event, hosted by Alana (with Megan supporting from the sidelines at home since she was sick), began with a territorial acknowledgement and honouring of yoga’s Indian lineage.
Thank you to Sandra Van Dong who helped us organized the event and delivered these acknowledgements.
Participants during the yoga portion of the event
Alana then led everyone through an all-levels yoga and myofascial rolling practice. We designed our class to be friendly for all ages, and we were overjoyed to see some families in our midst.
The social
After the movement practice, there was time to connect, learn, and create together.
Picture of event tables - including gift bags, pride bracelets, and donation instructions
The event included educational resources such as a 2SLGBTQIA+ reading lists and books. Throughout our venue, we shared information about flags of gender and sexual identity and numerous resources from Spectrum like a terminology guide.
Creation station! Make your own pronoun pins
Participants were encouraged to make their own pride bracelets or choose from many premade options representing various identities. Kids and adults alike sat down to colour, make their own pronoun pins, and chat.
To express our gratitude, we offered attendees snacks, coffee, and a gift bag with movement and LGBTQIA+ resources.
Alana leads the group through movement at Forbes
Why run an event like this?
Yoga as it’s practiced in the west is often reduced to asana - movement on a mat, sometimes in an expensive location that just isn’t realistic to access (financially, physically, emotionally) for some of us. But there are eight traditional limbs of yoga and asana is just one of those.
Yoga’s first limb - the yamas - asks us to practice ahimsa, satya and asteya, among other concepts. These Sanskrit words translate to nonviolence, truthfulness, and non-stealing, respectively. Yoga has a long history as a practice of liberation - of peaceful resistance against the status quo. Like the Pride movement that had its inception in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, yoga has historically been a tool of protest against injustice.
Megan and I want to honour these teachings - to use yoga as a means of uplifting communities and resisting oppression. We are exploring ways to do this in our community, not just through asana classes, but through cultivating spaces for like-minded, kindhearted folks to get together.
We’re still figuring out the best way to do this work and welcome your feedback and input.
Celebrate Pride is our first offering. We are already at work planning our next one.
If you want to get involved in delivering or designing future equity-motivated classes, reach out to us on the Contact page.
