In this series on Seva, or service yoga, we are highlighting people within our community who use yoga as a tool to be the hands and feet of Christ. As Christians, we are called to yoga not only as a means of personal transformation, but also as a path to transform the world. Seva is one such way.

When I first became a yoga instructor, I thought of teaching yoga in yoga studios, or perhaps church recreation rooms, where I could carve a space out of the distractions of the world to invite people into stillness. All that changed when I met Joanne Spence, began teaching in her yoga studio, and then discovered where else—and who else—she taught. Watching Joanne work fundamentally changed my assumptions about “sacred space.”

In 2004, as a former social worker turned yoga instructor (read her story here), Joanne founded the Pittsburgh nonprofit Yoga in Schools to provide yoga for K-12 students. Through Yoga in Schools, she obtained grants to not only bring yoga into the Pittsburgh public school system, but also residential centers for troubled youth. One day, I went with her to one of these centers—to witness how and why Joanne does what she does. 

Teaching in a Hallway

At the Center, she taught in the hallway of a ward for eight teenagers, right outside their bedrooms. The ward had a small gathering space where the hallway opened up, and Joanne filled it with mats and music from a tiny speaker. There wasn’t room for me to practice with the students, so I sat on a bench down the hall and observed. This wasn’t as creepy as it might sound: down the hall, staff members were talking, and throughout the class, several people walked through the hallway. I could not imagine a more distracting or harshly lit place to practice yoga. 

Slowly, the residents gravitated to the gathering space. A girl in flannel pajamas walked up: “Hey, it’s the yoga lady!”

“I’m a football player,” a boy in gym shorts said. “I don’t do yoga.”

From the mats on the floor, Joanne asked, “Why don’t you try it, just for today?” 

“Okay,” he shrugged, and laid down on the mat. 

“This is the best yoga teacher ever,” pajama girl said to football boy. “You’re going to like her.”

“I don’t want to do yoga today,” a girl wearing scrubs dropped like a stone onto a mat in the corner of the hallway. 

As Joanne handed out purple blankets and blue blocks, I wondered how this class would go. This was a far cry from a studio, where participants—who chose to pay for and attend the experience—generally sank gratefully onto their mats. 

Eventually, Joanne had eight students.

“Place the block on your belly,” Joanne invited, “and make it move up and down with your breathing.” The presence of the block was to focus their minds on their breathing. 

Down the hall, staff members begin talking loudly, louder than the music. 

“There are lots of distractions in this space,” Joanne said in response to the voices. “When you find yourself distracted, listen for my voice. Use it as your anchor for concentration.” 

I love using Joanne’s voice as an anchor: she has an Australian accent. In her voice, the word yoga sounds more like “yogur,” as in “yogurt.” Joanne makes yoga sound delicious. 

“I don’t like you,” the girl in the corner said, not moving. Not placing a block on her belly.

“That’s okay,” Joanne said. “I am glad you said that, and I want to ask you to just try. Just for today.”

The girl said nothing, but she did place a block on her stomach. 

Joanne was at the Center two days a week, but yoga was part of the daily routine at the Center. On the days she was not physically present, the students used Joanne’s Absolute Beginner Yoga DVD. The students heard her voice in the hallway, every day.  

All of the students were wearing socks for cleanliness required by the Center. Joanne was also wearing socks, and as Joanne walked in between the mats, I noticed that her socks had holes in them.

“What’s your yummy spot?” the girl in the corner abruptly asked. 

“Your yummy spot?” Joanne asked. “Oh, you must have been watching the DVD. Your yummy spot is where there’s a little bit of sensation, but not too much. Your internal mind chatter might say, ‘That’s too much.’ Or it might say, ‘Oh, that’s just perfect.’ And the mind is quiet. That’s the yummy spot – that’s where you make that mind/body connection. It feels just like your favorite ice cream.” 

The girl said nothing, and later she disappeared into her room. In their program, daily yoga is part of the schedule, but attendance is only recommended, never mandatory.

Later, Joanne told me that this moment with the girl in the corner was a breakthrough, a tiny victory. Throughout her stay at the Center, the girl has been resistant to yoga and Joanne. Here, in a subtle moment of curiosity, the student connected to the act of being. Who knows what messages about her body the girl received outside of the class, in her life outside of the Center. But in this one moment, she considered her body in a positive way and may have tried to find a place where her mind was calm. 

Joanne teaches for these small moments.

Inviting Teens to Balance

On the surface, this class looks SO different from a class in a studio: students talking back to the teacher, harsh lighting, people talking down the hall, socks on feet. This is a totally different atmosphere from a studio that can close its door to the world, providing a safe, quiet place away from distractions. A place where participants take off their socks and use the sticky mat for a pose like Down Dog. 

And yet, this is not a population that will find themselves in a yoga studio any time soon, so Joanne brings the yoga practice to them, creating what space she can, quite literally in the middle of their residence.             

Teenagers, in particular, benefit significantly from the practice of yoga. During adolescence, teenagers experience brain restructuring that results in their infamous hormonal shifts [1]. The brain restructuring happens slowly, often leaving the amygdala unregulated for a little while, and the amygdala is the part of the brain that operates under fight or flight. Adolescents also have lowered amounts of the serotonin and dopamine, neurochemicals that affect their abilities to feel good and to regulate their emotions. Teenagers struggling with mental disorders, like the students at this Center, benefit even more. Yoga balances the endocrine system [2]. The practice of breathing and moving increases serotonin and dopamine and decreases cortisol (stress hormone released by the adrenal glands) [3]. By balancing hormones and neurochemicals, the practice of yoga also balances the brain, the body, and the emotions. 

In the hallway, Joanne said, “Okay, let’s try something else. Let’s balance on an unstable surface.” Standing, she places a block on the mat and steps onto it with both feet. The students try it too.

“Why is it so important that we ground our feet?” one of the students asked, balancing on the block.

“Well,” Joanne said, “Our bodies carry energy inside us: too much energy and it's called anxiety—say that's a 10—and too little energy and it's called depression—call that a 1. So, optimally, we want to be in the 4-6 zone. Having our feet grounded in our environment helps us to release or build energy. If we tend toward anxiety, grounding is important. We can always be grounded in our environment, when we're standing in line, waiting, etc.” [4]

Her description here was more metaphorical than scientific, but it makes sense. I watched as the students wobbled on their yoga blocks, vicariously feeling the spongy surface under my own feet, wobbling with them. Do they make the connection between the wobbling on the mat and the wobbling in their lives? I don’t know. From my spot on the bench, I imagine myself in these two frames of mind: lethargic and fidgety, and I place my imaginary feet on the floor. All four corners of my feet inside my shoes on the tiled floor. There is no mystic energy of the earth here; it’s just a hallway. This action involves paying attention. This action involves being still. This action involves connecting with something else, something outside the fluctuations of my mind, the chemicals of my brain. 

Put your feet on the floor and breathe. 

Creating Sacred Space

As a Christian, when she began practicing yoga, Joanne wondered about its origins—specifically yoga’s tie to religion and if it would conflict with her own Christian beliefs. In the library, she found the 1960s English translation of Christian Yoga by the French Benedictine monk Jean Marie Déchanet—her first connection to how Christians might practice yoga (read more about Déchanet here). 

Online, Joanne discovered Father Thomas Ryan’s book Prayer of Heart and Body and devoured it. In it, Fr. Tom outlines how Christians can use meditation and yoga as a Christian spiritual practice, especially as an anecdote for all the busyness of contemporary life. 

In 2002, when Joanne opened her own yoga studio, she offered a “Prayers of Heart and Body” course. After that initial workshop, however, the studio became religiously neutral. No Sanskrit, no sutras, no religious imagery in the decorations. Joanne wanted yoga to be as accessible as possible to every person who walked through her door—irregardless of their religious tradition. 

When Joanne brought yoga into the schools, she faced questions from school boards and parents about yoga’s origins. She also no longer uses yoga products or jewelry with the OM symbol. Once, she was asked to change her music because she played “Amazing Grace.” In response to feedback, Joanne is extremely sensitive to anything—music, clothing, or words—that could jeopardize her yoga program. She uses a curriculum that focuses on the psychological effects of the breath and uses fun elementary songs about frogs instead of the sun salutations. Her emphasis on neutral, accessible language has been key to the success of her program. Each question helped her refine the language she used to represent the program, as well as how she taught it.

To make it even more available, Joanne produced a DVD called Absolute Beginner Yoga (2010)—the same one that the Center plays for students on days when Joanne isn’t present. The DVD contains a chair sequence and simple poses that anyone, even someone in a hospital bed, can do. Yoga doesn’t have to be complicated contortions. It’s a free practice that can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time—it’s just a matter of knowing how to do it. “If you can breathe,” she says, “you can do yoga.” Joanne’s mission is to give everyone access to it. 

When she teaches absolute beginners—students in hospital beds or residential centers—Joanne watches the divide between bodies and minds getting smaller. She witnesses bipolar and anorexic patients gain respect for their bodies; she helps public school students simply be the vulnerable kids they are under their hard exteriors; she invites adults to slow down and care for their achy backs and hearts. 

When I ask her how she understands her work as spiritual, Joanne says, “I’m inviting people into relationship with their bodies. That’s one of the most spiritual relationships humans have. It’s so intimate.” 

In this way, Joanne’s classes seem very different from other classes from Christians who teach yoga. Most of them teach from an explicitly Christian perspective. In a conversation with other Christian teachers of yoga, Joanne described her work as seva, the Sanskrit word for the yogic understanding of selfless service—doing something without expecting a personal return. In an ashram, seva is the word for the daily service one provides to keep the ashram going—like washing the floor or preparing food.

“We’ve been talking about creating sacred space,” Joanne explained to the teachers. “What I found myself doing in places like schools, psychiatric hospitals and juvenile detention centers, was creating sacred space. That’s not what I was asked to do, that’s not the plan, but that’s what was happening.”

Inviting the girl in the corner of the hallway to understand that her relationship with her body could feel delicious was creating a sacred space. It was creating a space where judgment is not present.

Wearing holey socks is another way Joanne creates a sacred space. Not all of her students at the Center or in public schools have starched white socks, fresh from the laundry. So Joanne intentionally wears older socks with holes to make sure all of the students feel comfortable—it’s a way of being “all things to all people,” like the apostle Paul said [5]. It’s a small gesture, but if a student is self-conscious about a hole in her sock, to see that the teacher also has holey socks lowers a potential barrier between the student and her ability to be.

Back to Class

At the end of the class with now six teenagers instead of eight, Joanne invited the students to lie down for savasana. “Do you remember the adjustment? If you don’t want me to adjust you,” she said, “place your hands on your belly. If you do want the adjustment, place your hands at your sides, palms up.” 

All the patients placed their hands on the floor, palms up. Joanne went to each one in turn, pulling gently on their legs, pressing their shoulder blades into the mat, lengthening their necks, and finally placing her thumbs in the middle of the patient’s forehead near the hairline and firmly following the hairline down to the temple. 

Sometimes with this adjustment, she leans forward and whispers, “I’m so glad you came here today.” 

And there it is. Under the fluorescent lights, in a hallway outside a bedroom where they don’t want to be, for a brief millisecond on a purple sticky mat, Joanne creates sacred space. Will they remember? Will they take this practice, this feeling with them when they leave? Joanne doesn’t know. And there’s the seva: no personal gain. Just the practice. Just the invitation to be safe in one’s own body. I can’t think of anything holier than that. 

Notes

[1] The ideas in this paragraph are detailed in the Yoga Ed. High School curriculum foreword, ii-iii (2009 ed.). Joanne was a Yoga Ed. trainer.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Weintraub, Amy. Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga. New York: Broadway Books, 2004. Print. 58.

[4] Joanne’s ideas here come from Yoga for Emotional Balance by Bo Forbes and Yoga for Depression by Amy Weintraub. 

[5] 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

Photo Credits: JoanneSpence.com and YogaInSchools.org