Trying for what yoga can be with ‘Pay What You Can Weekly Yoga Program

There’s a line of “superyachts” where one of the features is a yoga studio. Most people will never be on a yacht, let alone a superyacht, but yoga – with its health benefits and general mantras that focus on equity – is supposed to be much more accessible.

“We live in one of the most diverse cities in the world and as happens, the socioeconomic divides, the rising cost of living, the capitalization of ‘yoga,’ leaves us with a half a dozen yoga studios in a square mile with a one-hour class costing $27, and almost no studios or consistent public classes elsewhere,” Stovall said in an interview via email early this week. “I do not fault many of these studios—it is not an easy business and the overhead in places like Grove Street is daunting. But these classes and spaces are inherently exclusive. We can be doing more.”

Stovall has been instructing a weekly “Pay What You Can Weekly Yoga Program” at the Art House Gallery, 262 17th Street, Jersey City, since last month.

The Tuesday evenings yoga sessions are in addition to the classes Stovall leads at Snapdragon Coffee & Social, 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. the first and third Saturdays of the month – offered due to the support of Snapdragon host/owner Buzz Pasdar and Art House Productions in that capacity as well as at their Art House Gallery.

Stovall hopes to offer more classes in more neighborhoods. The finite period of sessions advertised at the Art House Gallery have been extended another five weeks, through April 14.

“We will continue with this pattern for the foreseeable future,” Stovall said.

“My intention with this project has been to create a community yoga program in Jersey City by providing affordable, accessible and inclusive yoga classes for all ages in safe neutral spaces throughout the city, seeking collaboration with established and growing community centers,” Stovall continued. “It has been an important aspect of the project to provide these classes on a regular basis. All classes are offered for ‘pay-what-you-can’ donations. Future classes will be offered as ‘pay-what-you-can’ on a sliding scale $5-25, with the lower end of the scale suggested for those underrepresented in yoga settings and the higher end for those able.”

Stovall said that, as with initiatives like Yoga to the People and Exhale to Inhale (“ specifically providing trauma-informed classes,” Stovall noted), “the desire to start this program came simply from a desire to bring yoga back to the people,” Stovall said. “Yoga is inherently… available—you can practice it on the floor, in a chair, in a city or village; you don’t need Lululemon leggings or an Alo mat or an Instagram account. We know this, but also these aspects of it have so deeply infiltrated and colored this modern yoga world, that a practice that was once – millennia ago – a practice of wispy sages, and which has undergone a number of major overhauls, has become inaccessible for many.

“It is important to note that this is a borrowed practice—the history is long and nuanced and in some ways complicated but ultimately to practice you need only you and your body and your breath,” Stovall said. “The practice is ultimately independent but has an incredible social and communal aspect that I hope to cultivate in our own way.”

Stovall said she came to her own practice of yoga in a time of need. “While struggling personally, I had the privilege to (be able to) quit my job and to pay $4000 to spend one month in the jungle, on an island in Thailand to complete my first teacher training. Modern yoga winds up in the laps of those with the privilege to be able to center their healing, their self-care, in very specific and exclusive ways.”

Creating the conditions for “repeated personal inquiry and growth” to take place in, as Stovall put it, is the key challenge beyond just getting people into a yoga class.

The environments people return to at home are also a factor in the way someone may be able to embrace yoga.

But Stovall said that that—“repeated personal inquiry and growth"—is what yoga can be. “I know that we do not need $4000 to access that. I don’t know, yet, how we bring this practice to the people who need it—or just who, precisely these people are. I hope I can hear from them and continue to learn from them. I know that I have benefited from it. I know that others can.

“I know that there are many existing projects out there throughout the world that are working to bring this practice to those who have been disenfranchised, who are under-represented in yoga settings, people of color, queer, or otherwise marginalized folks,” Stovall said. “The idea of ‘trauma-informed’ or trauma-sensitive yoga is spreading. … Often where there is trauma is precisely within the communities that are disadvantaged, without access to this practice and others like it. Working through these ideas and providing this kind of access are integral aspects of the project.”

Yoga sessions at Snapdragon, 190 Monticello Ave., have a limit of about 10 to 12 students. Art House Gallery sessions have a limit of around 25. Email Stovall at allisonstovallyoga@gmail.com for the most up to date information.

Cart

Your cart is empty

Trying for what yoga can be with ‘Pay What You Can Weekly Yoga Program’ at Art House