WELLNESS: TOWNSHIP YOGI
The aim is to spread the peace of yoga into tense townships in South Africa
TOWNSHIP YOGI Kate Cracknell talks to Elle Matthews, director of the Township Yogi
Project – an initiative that takes yoga to the townships of South Africa in a bid to spread calm and wellbeing to deprived communities
What’s the Township Yogi Project? It’s a non-profit organisation that we launched in February 2013, where we go into South African townships, set up grassroots yoga studios and offer free yoga classes to people living there. Classes are run by volunteer yoga
teachers, but we also identify and train unemployed people within the townships to become qualified teachers. They’re then able to teach their own communities, with classes generally running once or twice a week in each location. The project started in the townships
Project director Elle Matthews 94
spabusiness.com issue 3 2015 ©CYBERTREK 2015
of Inanda – where Nelson Mandela cast his fist vote and Gandhi created a settlement – and KwaMashu near Durban and is expanding into a number of other
townships in the area. We also started up in Johannesburg in April and will be offering classes in Cape Town soon.
Why did you do this? I’d been a practitioner of yoga for a few years, but in 2012 I went on a yoga retreat to Thailand and it changed my life. I could feel the effects on my mind, body and spirit. When I returned home to South Africa, I found myself focused on the suffering of people all around me. I could see the desperation of people sitting on the curb as I drove past, hoping for a job. Or the despair of people I knew who lived in the townships and were victims of crime and violence, or living with the effects of HIV/Aids and TB. I had a deep knowing
ALL PHOTOS ©PETER MATTHEWS PICTURES
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126