Yoga program has a message for Hawaii’s marginalized

The typical yoga class usually begins with some stretching and informal greetings before getting down to yoga asanas, the postures and poses that will make up the day’s exercise.

But at a recent Project Koa Yoga class, Hawaiian storyteller Anuhea Kanealii opened with an oli, followed by a talk story session based on the Hawaiian mo‘olelo, or legend, about Haloa, the original ancestor of the Hawaiian people, and his deep connection to kalo, a relationship portrayed as no less than brothers. Yoga instructor Hi‘ilana Pila then led a yoga session that tied in with the story in some way, including moves like the goddess pose and sun salutations in reference to various characters in Kanealii’s story.

“It just sort of coincides to make the mo‘olelo and the movements make sense,” Pila said.

The injection of Hawaiian culture into yoga is part of the project’s effort to bring yoga instruction to Native Hawaiians. The two-year-old program, which offers regular classes at Ka Waiwai, promotes yoga for many marginalized groups, especially those known collectively as BIPOCs — Blacks, Indigenous and People of Color — as well as QTIA2S+Mahu (Queer, Transexual, Intersexual, 2 Spirit and Mahu) people. “These groups have felt distanced from the yoga community,” said Laura Toyofuku-Aki, co-founder of Project Koa Yoga.“Our mission is to diversify yoga wellness and make it more accessible here in Hawaii,” she said.

The project’s programs are part of a larger trend of what is called “trauma-­informed care,” an approach to health care based on practices that promote a culture of safety, empowerment and healing. Its yoga sessions often include discussion or journaling as a way to integrate someone’s thoughts and life experiences into the spirituality and physicality of yoga.

Toyofuku-Aki, who is of Native Hawaiian and Japanese ancestry, grew up on the mainland and worked in corporate America for several years. After “burning out,” she said, she got a job teaching yoga to prisoners in New York and discovered that many of their life experiences were similar to hers, and that it was only “small choices” that landed them behind bars, while she avoided it.

“It was so easy, that could have been me there,” she said, recalling her thoughts. “These people are more similar to me than the people in the yoga studio.”

Toyofuku-Aki came to Hawaii in 2018 on family business and wound up staying. She began working with social service agencies that served Native Hawaiian youth, some of whom were homeless or abuse victims. “We would try to get them to engage in yoga classes,” Toyofuku-Aki said, “and they would right away tell me, ‘That’s not for me.’”

When she asked why, they would do a search for “Yoga Hawaii” on Instagram, which would come up with images of “skinny, rich, white ladies.”

“I was like, ‘Oh wow. According to this, you’re right,’” said Toyofuku-Aki, who co-founded Project Koa Yoga with Victoria Roland two years ago.

One of the focuses of the project is to train BIPOC and QTIA2S+Mahu people to be yoga instructors, providing role models and inspiration for their communities. It’s a goal that resonated with instructor Pila, a Native Hawaiian, who sees yoga as a way to “help my community heal in a different way.”

Pila had been casually studying yoga for years before starting lessons with Toyofuku-Aki about four years ago. She started thinking about getting into teaching a couple years later.

“I just wanted to serve my community,” she said. “I’d never heard people in the Hawaiian community talking about yoga as a way of healing.”

She said she faced obstacles to getting into yoga from her own family and her own community, who would say things “like ‘I’m too big, or it’s for haole people, and I can’t get into these crazy poses,’” Pila said. “And I was like ‘No, that’s not yoga at all. You can just sit there and breathe, stand and breathe, and that’s yoga.’ I was trying to change the mindset around what yoga actually is.”

Roland was running a shelter for houseless people when she met Toyofuku-Aki, who asked about teaching yoga to some of the people there. “I’m that BIPOC person who didn’t feel comfortable in some of the yoga spaces, so I stopped going,” Roland said. “I didn’t find a network or a community that also was aligned with my thinking, so Laura essentially said ‘Let’s create it.’

“Now I see everyone that’s like me. I hear the same stories. They say ‘I never felt comfortable, I would never see myself as a teacher,’” she said. “And now I’m a certified teacher, teaching at shelters that I actually ran.”

Participants in the project’s classes appreciate its approach to spreading the healing power of yoga. Suma Metla, a pediatric physical therapist, is of Indian descent and grew up practicing yoga in a casual way.

“I think Project Koa Yoga does a great job of being inclusive of all communities, and I think bringing yoga to Hawaii and melding it with the culture is incredible,” she said. “To make sure the practice of yoga feels accessible to the community is really important.”

For more information about Project Koa Yoga, visit projectkoayoga.com.