Yoga stretches out

• Ancient fitness practice starts to turn up where least expected, and is most appreciated

By Lee Williams

The Portland Tribune, Mar 18, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

KATIE HARTLEY / TRIBUNE PHOTO

A new batch of teachers takes a Street Yoga instructor training class last month. From here, they will go on to bring poses and perhaps some inner peace to homeless youth, at-risk teens and families in transition in the Portland area.

Let’s meditate. Close your eyes. Visualize a yoga class. What do you see?

Shimmering smooth floors reflecting in mirrored walls where fit bodies in fashionable leotards twist and turn themselves into shapes you can only imagine? Now open your eyes.

There are other options.

A handful of instructors in the Portland area are stretching out of the bounds of conventional yoga studios or tailoring their classes to meet the needs of students who might not otherwise have ever attempted downward-facing dog.

“Yoga has attained this kind of celebrity status now – we’ve Westernized it, we’ve materialized it and we’re focusing on ourselves,” says Lana Davis, a San Diego-based Ashtanga yoga instructor.

Davis, who teaches yoga to girls placed in group homes through San Diego’s foster care system, was recently in Northeast Portland to participate in a training workshop for Street Yoga.

Founded in fall 2002 by Portlander Mark Lilly, a former software engineer, Street Yoga brings postures, poses and the chance for a moment or two of inner peace to homeless youth, at-risk teens and families in transition in the Portland area. On a given weekend, youths at Portland’s Outside In, where Lilly taught his first Street Yoga class, will be conquering mountain pose and attempting sun salutations.

Street Yoga has come to be involved with seven Portland community programs, and has even expanded to bring meditation and wellness to teens serving time in the Donald E. Long School, a juvenile correctional center.

“There are a lot of services that deal with food and shelter,” Lilly notes. “But if you’re strong from the inside, you can deal with the outside – and that’s where the homeless find themselves. And yoga fills part of that need.”

Yoga, he says, can help establish mental and physical balance. From there, kids might just be more equipped to make better choices in their lives.

“There are other things to do besides triage,” says training participant Chris Harvey, 25, a medical student who also volunteers at Oregon Health & Science University and lives near Outside In.

Street Yoga’s training sessions, held a few times each year, are open to everyone. Volunteers for the programs may be chosen from the workshops, but some, like Harvey, are aiming to take their passion for the poses to the street all on their own.

“If you’re living on the street, you can only spend so much of your time searching for food and shelter,” Harvey says. “At least for one hour, on one day, you can do something that makes you feel a little better.”

Yoga at the CoHo

On a weekday afternoon in the low-lit heart of the CoHo Theater in Northwest Portland, a few figures stretch on mats and blankets below aisles of empty seats, in a space usually referred to as the stage.

Instructor Steve Davis launched Yoga at the CoHo earlier this year.

It’s a gutsy move. The class is just around the corner from Core Power, a yoga franchise based in Colorado. And certainly, Northwest Portland has its share of conventional yoga studios.

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