To our RY community, students and friends, past and present:

This is Jess Vega, and I currently serve as your Board President, as well as for some of you, your teacher. I am writing today very simply to ask for your support.

Riverwest Yogashala is a people-powered yoga school. As the only nonprofit, community-based yoga school in Milwaukee, we offer the highest quality teaching in the Iyengar method for the most affordable fees.
But we are also so much more than that.

We are a diverse community with stories under our skin, coming together to sweat, struggle, and stretch any amount more, any little bit further. We are students at RY not by accident - for one reason or another, this place has changed us.

I'll speak for myself.

I initially joined RY because it was the only place in Milwaukee where my teacher was a bad-ass, unapologetic woman of color, and that helped me feel safe. I needed to feel safe, too, because quite frankly the first time I did some of those backbends and inversion, I came out crying. I was working through my own depression and trauma and being asked to reach and stretch, quite simply, to transform myself through the discomfort but courageousness of asana.

For me, yoga brought meaning, and even though sometimes it seemed too difficult, every so often a teacher would help me surprise myself, by doing that thing I thought I couldn't do.

I am grateful for how Iyengar Yoga has helped me grow, and for Riverwest Yogashala's open doors. And it is from that gratitude that I support Riverwest Yogashala.

Your story is probably different than mine. Maybe you haven't been to class in a while, but you remember that time you saw yourself in another student whose shoulders are as tight as yours. Or maybe you were grateful to see another student had a hole in their socks! Or maybe RY is one of the only places you can afford to come to class, with our community-gift/sliding scale class offerings. Or maybe something more.

If this place, this space, this community has inspired any gratitude in you, can you offer a donation to help us continue doing this work? For us, every little bit really does matter, $3, $5, or $10. We are so appreciative.

I wish you all wellness and happiness,
-Jessica Vega Gonzalez
Board President, CIYT

It’s a new and ancient way of being with each other. 

Yoga is a sacred practice, a 5,000 year old tradition rooted deeply in India. It is a path and process, a way of life one chooses to study under a teacher with whom you have a deep connection. Cultural appropriation in the US has taken yoga and made it into something it’s not — an aerobic exercise class that flexible, thin-bodied people do at the gym. 

Like many things in the US, yoga has become a commodity --something easily bought and sold for money. Community Gift is an attempt to work against this. 

Yoga is sacred. If we put any dollar amount on a class, we end up devaluing yoga. At the same time, teachers aren’t chasing paper, but we do need some bread!

Community Gift says:

• Teachers can offer students freely as gift their knowledge of the yogic traditions. 
• Students can offer freely as gift whatever feels right to them, in return. (Be creative! Ask what the teacher needs)

Offer what feels right to you.

Suggested Sliding Scale: $5-$18
But PLEASE, offer WHATEVER feels right to you. 

Thank you for being with us. 

Gratitude.