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january 2018yogajournal.com.auTHIS IS WHAT
good karma
LOOKS LIKE
Sure, you could teach yoga to communities in need.
But our inaugural Good Karma Award winners
exemplify the many other ways to practice seva,
or selfless service. Here are their inspiring
stories, plus advice to help you find your
own path to giving back.
JILL BRENNER CAN POINT to a specific moment in her first yoga-
teachertraining that changed the trajectory of what the ancient
practice would mean to her forever. “The teacher said, ‘Treat
others like they are inside of you—those who are less fortunate,
even the most evil,’” recalls the public relations exec turned yoga
teacher. “These dual concepts, that we are all connected and
should practice compassion for others, really resonated with me
and has inspired me to be of service through yoga ever since.”
Aha moments like Brenner’s are common for yoga
practitioners, prompting us to wake up to a shared responsibility
for making the world a better place, says Rob Schware, PhD,
executive director of the Give Back Yoga Foundation. “All yoga
practices are about paying attention,” says Schware. “As we work
to improve ourselves, the veils of avidya—a basic ignorance of
who we are, and of the underlying reality that everything in the
universe is connected—begin to fall away. And as we get closer
to understanding how connected we are to our fellow yoga
students, families, and communities, we ask ourselves, ‘How
can I be most useful?’”
Of course, a host of things precludes many of us from taking
the next step and actually answering this question, much less
acting on it. Busy lives may leave little time for volunteering; tight
budgets can make donating money a challenge. And while so
many of us with teacher trainings under our belts would like to
use our training to bring yoga to underserved communities, it
doesn’t mean we actually can (for the reasons above and more).
Schware says it’s important to think about yoga service in
broader terms. “You don’t have to launch a brand-new non-profit
to give the gift of yoga to a community in need,” he says. “Just as
yoga shows us how to be here now, giving back can be about doing
something now.” In a sense, your charitable endeavours are your
yoga practice: helping feed the hungry, solving water scarcity
issues, tutoring or mentoring students, grocery shopping for the