Thursday 11 September 2014

Volunteering through the powers of Yoga.

So volunteering abroad, visiting orphanages and all the ‘gap year’ student ‘doing good’ has been a major discussion for me throughout this trip, not only with myself but friends who have come out to travel and other friends we have met along the way. Overall I am against it, but once I was a 23yr old, paying a lot of money to go and work in an orphanage in South Africa, although the trip didn’t work out due to a family bereavement and not one penny was refunded it set me on a thinking a stream, thoughts of where does the money go and what was the need for me to spend so much to volunteer, it therefore has been a question always with me and a way of thinking that has stayed. 

As most of you know my passion is children and young people, it’s my day to day work, it’s what I crave doing and what I hope to be part of for the rest of my working career, so therefore I started wondering whilst away, how do I volunteer but not cause attachment problems, have to pay stupid amounts of money or just generally be involved with a problematic organisation. 


I started to do a bit of research before coming away, I knew I wanted to stay in my current way of working with young people and preferably young girls, my research didn’t come up with much apart from the standard google search, pay £’s to volunteer, with this I put the search on the back burner and decided to look whilst away. 


Whilst doing my yoga training a part of the course was karma yoga work, we were asked to carry out a project with a group of people offering some form of karma work, this really got my thoughts going again of how I can use yoga to do this, therefore it’s not a long term piece of work but more of a workshop to offer skills, experience and knowledge, it just fitted perfect with my already way of thinking but also how I could offer volunteering throughout the rest of time in Asia. 


With this I started researching again and found a blog that had information on about different organizations in South East Asia, one that came up was in Chiang Mai, called COSA, Children’s Organisation of South East Asia, the organization works with young girls who have been or are at risk of sex trafficking, I just felt the organisation was perfect for the Yin workshop I wanted to offer and the age was an age I was used to working with, except for the language barrier I was ready to put an email together and offer my skills. After a few correspondences, a skype meeting was booked, I was so nervous but excitedly the meeting went well and we organized a date for when I would be in Chiang Mai and the girls would be off school. 


I was SO NERVOUS, my stomach went poorly, my mouth filled with ulcers and I just couldn’t concentrate, it was so weird but I just felt a bag of butterflies were in my stomach. Sam helped me through my nerves and after a bit of YIN practice and my workshop written down I was ready for the Saturday to come. 


Sam drove me to COSA which was just outside Chiang Mai, then Lori (center manager) met us and drove me to the shelter, after a brief introduction I was introduced to some of the girls and given the yoga mats to start the session, the girls were a mix between 7-17yr olds and had all tried yoga before, my challenge was the language, luckily for me one of the girls spoke English and helped me translate the difference between yang yoga to yin yoga.
I had put together a 50min session, knowing that at any time the session could be cut short due to the girls attention, understanding and experience of the yoga as it is a more therapeutic style of yoga and therapy in Thailand isn’t  something that occurs as it does in western countries. 


I felt so lucky though as the girls went through 45mins of the sequence perfectly, they chatted and giggled but at times there was such serene bliss in their emotions and asana posture it was a beauty to watch. The time when silence fell was just beautiful and I could see the depth of the yoga the girls had entered and how their minds had entered the yin bliss. 


At the end of the session I gave each of the girls a small hand out of what we had done and attempted to talk briefly with them about the practice; however they informed me they were very relaxed and pointed at Shavasana as their favourite posture. 


Overall I felt the workshop went well, the girls engaged and there smiles showed their enjoyment, the questions in my head still lay there and I felt that I was stronger in my decision about volunteering due to the conversations had whilst there. I did however feel so privileged to have the experience and the chance to offer yoga to the girls, when focusing back to my karma yoga I wondered what my aim was with the girls and realised the smiles on their faces were what my aim was and however they took the experience they all seemed to enjoy it.







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