In Hudson County, yoga studios may be closed, but many of their instructors are still operating via streaming options online.

Among those options are Steven Cheng’s Simha Yoga Lab ( https://www.simhayoga.com ), where Cheng is offering up classes on Facebook Live and Instagram. He’s operating on the honor system and asking for $10 per view, $5 for those who may be financially strapped, through VenMo. Jivamukti Yoga Center in Jersey City is offering a daily live-streaming session on Facebook Live and others platforms, including where they’ve moved their classes at http://jivamuktiyogalive.com/. In Bayonne, Bay Ohm Yoga offers instructions for their streaming classes at https://www.bayohmyoga.com/. These are just a few of the local options available.

Even among a bevy of yoga options online, Newark Yoga Movement comes from and remains a distinct mold built one county away.

The youth-centered yoga nonprofit is offering free live options seven days a week ( https://www.newarkyogamovement.org/freeclasses ), via its Facebook Live page, Instagram Live page, and on its YouTube page – open to adults, kids, and families locally and beyond.

“Our YouTube channel has over 25 new videos posted in the last three weeks including those for our students PreK-12th,” founder Debby Kaminsky said. “Some highlights include classes in American Sign Language (ASL), classes for children having special needs, a class in Spanish for families, family yoga, chair yoga for seniors, restorative yoga for everyone who wants to chill.

“Personally, I don’t see a lot of yoga videos out in the world for ASL and to me this is a very big deal," Kaminsky said. "YouTube and all the live venues are now flooded with yoga classes, especially during Covid-19. We have on our YouTube channel gone further to really capture those segments which can be appropriate nationwide.”

Newark Yoga Movement was founded by Kaminsky in 2009 after she read an article about the graduation rate in Newark being well below the state average. “I knew from my own experience with yoga that the tools yoga could provide, AKA stress and anxiety busters, could be of help to reverse this statistic.”

Kaminsky met with then Mayor (now Sen.) Cory Booker, whose office helped connect her with the schools.

“Our pitch was that not only were we cheap intervention – we don't need to build a school to make change, we start from the individual – but that we could help foster a stage of calm for a school and students. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is important in reaching the whole child and the whole educator. … We could share tools to help reduce anxiety and stress, increase focus and calm and also build confidence, among yoga's many other benefits.”

After conducting a pilot test of one 20-minute yoga session among more than 300 students across the elementary school age-ranges, questionnaire results indicated: “Net, 64% were less stressed, more calm and peaceful after 20 minutes. 71% felt it would be good in their school and 72% of educators felt the program would be good in their school,” Kaminsky said.

“Flash forward to the present,” Kaminsky said. “In 11 years we’ve served over 32,000 students Pre-K through high school in a variety of programs and populations – children having special needs, children with degrees of deafness, behavioral students – and over 5,000 educators and thousands in the community. Our vision is not to stop until we can help provide these life tools to every child and everyone who can positively impact a child in Newark.”

Kaminsky said it isn’t always easy work, going into a school, so Newark Yoga Movement pays all of its yoga guides.

“I call it ‘Paid Seva’ as ‘seva’ means charity,” Kaminsky said. “It's not a lot, yet it helps keep our yoga guides whole. Because we don't have programs running in our schools at the moment, many of our yoga guides are affected. By offering our live classes for the community and beyond now, we are paying our yoga guides for their service to all.”

Offering yoga regularly is extremely important right now, Kaminsky said.

“Educators are more stressed and stretched with now doing online school as well as balancing their own personal lives that could include their own children having online school. Calm is key so that all can thoughtfully respond to this situation at hand rather than knee-jerk react.”

Yoga advertised at its most commercialized as a lifestyle as as much as a discipline, has often made the discipline seem beyond the means of many people – specifically people whose lack of resources result in much more external stress factors, like living in noisy neighborhoods prone to bursts of violence and where “finding your breath,” naturally, is a challenge.

Kaminsky said that in the year of the Newark Yoga Movement, when she was teaching a bunch of middle school students, a phys ed teacher told her:

“This is a prime example if an urban student is given an opportunity to experience something like yoga that was really known more as a suburban thing, the sky's the limit.

“In fact, students from his class came up to him and asked to start a yoga club,” Kaminsky said. “I also remember teaching in a high school PE class and the 11th grade female said to me, ‘I really like yoga. If you hadn't made me try it, I wouldn't have ever done it.’”

Kaminsky thought her yoga initiative would be limited to what she called “required” environments like a PE class.

“I knew that if we only worked by opting in interested students, AKA a yoga club, we'd be missing a lot and so would the students. Often, the children who really need something, don't go for it. I think the same is true for adults. I have a motto, ‘you have to do what you don't want to do because that's what you really need.’

“Making connection is very important as well,” Kaminsky added. “I can not change the fact that I am white. I can though continue to listen and find ways to authentically create connection with students and staff.

Kaminsky said that a few years ago, NYM co-sponsored a scholarship exclusively for Newarkers – in the hopes of getting more people color of to teach yoga. 18 candidates were selected who went through a 200-hour training program. Many of them went in their own direction, Kaminsky said, adding to the yoga guides available to Newarkers.

But there’s a particular challenge of making yoga work for young people in distressed communities, where they might lack consistency.

“So many children come from challenging situations. ... We might be working with a child who is angry and the only way he knows how to quell his or her anger is by a physical action. We come in and do certain yoga poses and breathing and the child is no longer angry, yet at the same time they are conflicted because maybe at home the way anger is displayed and dealt with is physical. So patience and the recognition that sometimes you go two steps forward and one step back is necessary in urban areas.

“But there is huge hope,” Kaminsky added. “One of our model schools, Sussex Avenue School has had a yoga program for seven years. Walking through the halls, one is blown away. It's quiet because everyone is in their classrooms teaching. There is no yelling on the part of the teachers. The students smile. The students are polite. The school is calm.”

Newark’s overall graduation has generally inched upward for the past several years.

Learn more about Newark Yoga Movement at https://www.newarkyogamovement.org.