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OUR IMPACT
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The Warrior Flow Foundation ignites social change by bringing trauma-informed yoga, mindfulness, sound healing, and conscious movement programs to places where they are most needed, including hospitals, shelters, schools, police stations, hospice settings, and more.
Time after time, participants in our trauma-sensitive yoga and wellness programs have expressed to us how deeply impacted they are by these practices. Whether we are working with the homeless, with police and first responders, with stressed-out physicians and medical residents, with long-term care patients in wheelchairs, or with girls and women recovering from commercial sex trafficking, we see the same thing happen again and again: the light coming back into people's eyes, as they experience a reprieve from their stress and suffering.
Often, participants approach our facilitators after class to express deep gratitude for the opportunity — so rare in their stress-filled lives — to simply experience an hour of peace and relaxation. It is not uncommon in our classes to see participants shed tears as they rediscover the possibility of feeling well in their own bodies. Sometimes people who were former residents at homeless shelters and have since moved into new homes have recognized their Warrior Flow Foundation facilitator on the street or in a store and approached them to say how much the practices helped them.
These individuals may know nothing about “yoga” or “mindfulness” or “sound healing” as practices. The majority of first-time participants in our programs have never set foot in a “yoga” class or studio before. But by the end of a session, they know that something has shifted inside them, because they feel less stress, less fear, more hope, more inner peace, and more capacity for joy.
Trauma-informed yoga and wellness practices teach participants tools to better self-regulate their own nervous systems and feel more at home in their own bodies and lives, as well as tools to better co-regulate with other people in relational contexts. In turn, this contributes to improved clinical outcomes. People with tools for self-care, self-regulation and co-regulation experience greater emotional resilience and impulse control.
The importance of this cannot be overstated in a context like the shelters we serve, where people recovering from homelessness and/or commercial sexual exploitation are frequently ALSO recovering from co-occurring conditions including mental health disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, etc.), physical health disorders (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, etc.), and behavioral health disorders (e.g., substance abuse, disordered eating, etc.).
In addition, our program participants at these facilities are disproportionately people of color, specifically African Americans, which reflects the harsh realities of racialized trauma and lack of opportunity and access faced by people of color in our society. Some have experienced incarceration. All have experienced severe poverty and collective, generational trauma.
Moreover, these same individuals have often been the victims of physical and emotional abuse, sexual abuse, police violence, community violence, and other traumas that leave lasting emotional scars.
Their wounds are deep. For them, the healing practices of trauma-sensitive yoga and meditation are not “nice-to-have” — and the sometimes privileged notion of “wellness” doesn’t do justice to their acute needs. Our programs offer these wounded human beings crucial, transformative tools for healing from profound trauma. Once glimpsed, the possibility of psychological and emotional healing — and the sense of hope at least momentarily restored — can have long-lasting impacts, improving not only clinical outcomes but actual survival rates.
By supporting The Warrior Flow Foundation with a one-time or recurring donation of any amount, you help us make a profound contribution to human flourishing and communal healing.
This is the impact we make.
Together. With you.
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(last four digits code if requested: 1615)
*Upon request, a letter of acknowledgment of donation for tax purposes can be provided for donations of $250 or more.
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