This month’s featured teacher is Alana Aichholz.
Alana began her yoga journey as a kid, flowing alongside her mother as they did home practices. Her first time stepping into an actual yoga studio was in 2023 at BBYU, and she immediately found her community. She completed her 200 hour teacher training through BBYU in February 2024, under the guidance of Tim Kelleher, Emily Jonas, and Caitlyn Graham Visconte. As she begins her journey as a teacher, she strives to approach the practice through a trauma-informed lens.
She was called to teacher training to deepen her connection with the practice and use it as a tool to build mind-body awareness to help her navigate her mental health. In class you can expect a fun, joyous flow that is accessible to all levels!
Alana is currently in nursing school and is passionate about access to addiction treatment.
Outside of the studio she loves to bike, take care of her plants (that are always giving her a run for her money), hike, and skydive!
The Class:
The BIPOC Yoga Collective is an accessible, all-levels practice for those who identify as BIPOC. This monthly class intends to create a safe and familiar space to expose new and seasoned yogis to Boston’s BIPOC instructors, local community of practitioners, and a diversifying studio space. Classes will rotate between different instructors who will take care to ensure students at all levels are able to follow along and create a container that may leave them feeling stronger, empowered, or rested depending on the class design.
Purpose:
To create a shared space where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color may be in community with others who share a deep understanding of their marginalization, because of their unspoken shared experience. The intent is to create a sense of safety in one’s authenticity without the gaze of well-meaning and curious onlookers or “saviors”.
We hope to create an automatic increase of baseline trust simply by holding space for this experience, but continuing to build upon it by leveraging ongoing feedback and representation from the varied perspectives, racial groups and levels of privilege within the broader BIPOC identity group.
Our goal is to have attendees engage in the practice of yoga without the reminders of negatively racialized lived experiences within their racial identities, and create solidarity among us.
Why BIPOC benefit from their own spaces:
Although those who don’t experience racialization or colorism may not see it, systemic oppression and overt/unconscious biases often create division, disadvantaging those not part of dominant groups within various settings. Most Western yoga studios are owned and attended by cis, white, thin, able-bodied people who make up a dominant group. Affinity groups create a boundary for those who have or could experience ‘othering’, microaggressions, or just feel out of place, the space to feel sheltered from that real or perceived threat
How to determine if participation is for you:
You might ask yourself:
Do I authentically share this identity or background, including lived experience?
Have I felt unwelcome, unsafe, or unseen in a space similar to the one this affinity space is being held?
Is my presence adding to that shared sense of safety among those sharing this identity? Could my presence break that sense of safety?
What to expect:
Rotating instructors
Visiting instructors
Mixed-levels
Back to basics
Events
Quarterly workshops
Price: $10
When: Monthly on Saturdays at 2pm