The Ompowerment Project

Our purpose is to spread awareness of the healing nature of embodied, self-regulation practices and trauma informed yoga to communities that would otherwise not have access to them. Over time, this will help to reduce the wellbeing gap - the conditions that determine who gets to be well and who does not due to the commercialization of wellbeing to afford access predominantly to those with privilege, money, time, and geographic location. By focusing on the mental and emotional health and wellbeing of refugees, we aim to support an environment of safety, belonging, dignity, and empowerment, in which the refugees find their voice and are re-connected to their own capacity to lead effective, sustainable change in their communities. Our avenue for offering this support is through the practices of trauma informed yoga, which have been shown to relieve the symptoms of traumatic stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. As renowned post-traumatic stress clinician Bessel A. van der Kolk MD reports, “yoga has been used effectively to treat many of the symptoms of traumatic stress disorders…including insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Practicing yoga has also been shown to improve stress management, quality of life, and emotional wellbeing. Through gentle breath and movement, trauma sensitive yoga offers trauma survivors a means to cultivate a more positive relationship to their bodies and ease many of the symptoms of traumatic stress.” Refugees worldwide have long benefited from yoga but access has been dependent on volunteer availability. Our mission is to promote community-led leadership by offering refugee communities the capacity to lead themselves.