Bucking the trend for expensive yoga studios in trendy neighborhoods, Edinburgh Community Yoga Outreach (ECYO) is taking yoga to the other side of town as the Edinburgh Pay-it-forward Yoga Festival (edyogafest) returns this February following last year’s resounding success.
The festival, the first of it’s kind in Scotland, aims to double the money raised in 2016. Which last year helped enable more than 800 of Edinburgh’s most vulnerable people with mental and enduring health conditions access the healing benefits of yoga. And supported people throughout the city affected by addiction, trauma and social deprivation.
The heart of the week long festival, which runs from 13th -19th February 2017, will be at the Serenity Café on the edge of Dumbiedykes, a café run by the charity Comas for people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.
More than twenty teachers and ten yoga studios from across the city are coming together in a celebration of diversity and community, offering their own classes as part of the wider festival programme.
Festival goers can expect a varied and wide-ranging timetable of yoga classes and events for all ages and abilities shaking off the image that yoga is only for the super flexible and fit. True to the spirit of yoga, all of the teachers taking part in the full week’s program will give their time for free.
Organised by ECYO, in partnership Comas, (a gaelic word meaning ‘ability’), all proceeds from the festival will be shared between the two partners in a bid to raise vital funds for those most in need at this critical time of increased pressure on front line services suffering funding cuts.
Laura Wilson, Founder and Director of ECYO comments: “We’re really keen to shake off the image that yoga is a practice that is exclusive or inaccessible. So this year more than ever we’ve worked hard to bring together an exciting timetable of yoga classes and events aimed at appealing to all ages and abilities. We hope that the festival will entice people to come and give it a go and see how yoga can benefit them. The wonderful thing about this festival is that in buying a ticket for yourself, you are also helping to raise funds which then either pays towards a yoga class for someone else out there who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to access or afford it or goes towards vital support for people affected by addiction, mental health or social deprivation.”
For the Pay-it-forward Yoga Festival program visit www.edyogafest.co.uk
