YOGA: Teaching asanas to the orphaned and abused

Forget yoga chic. Reema Datta is on a mission to introduce yoga to abused women, orphaned children and struggling villages through her non-profit, The Usha Yoga Foundation. Her group also promotes yoga for HIV patients and people with depression.

Datta’s not alone. Foundations such as Street Yoga and the American Association of Yoga in Daily Life are also proponents of yoga as a humanitarian effort.

Since yoga has arrived in the west, science has found ample proof of yoga’s physical and psychological benefits.

The National Cancer Institute recently funded a study that determined the improved quality of life in patients practicing yoga while undergoing chemotherapy. An article in Psychology Today also touted the role of hatha yoga in manic depression.

One of Datta’s projects involves a teacher, Marie Claire Jenkins, in England who teaches yoga to people suffering from bipolar disorder.

A background of women’s studies and work with the United Nations led Datta to work with battered women shelters. She found that teaching yoga to emotionally and physically scarred women was empowering.

The effects of yoga on emotional health are further supported in a significant study from The National Institute for Mental Health in India, which found a 73% success rate in treating depression with the sudharshan kriya breathing technique.

“People feel their [own] power directly when they do yoga,” Datta said. “I saw it in these women as they felt their strength. They loved the classes.”

Datta has landed a record deal, co-authored a book, and teaches yoga workshops and teachers training worldwide. Through Usha, she has helped bring yoga to Africa, India, England, United States and the Amazon.

Although born and raised in the US, she spent months in India, including a year in Varanasi, learning about yoga and the Indian health science of ayurveda. Her grandfather, “Bapuji”, practices yoga poses and breathing for two hours daily before committing to a day of service to his community in Khaknar, Madhya Pradesh.

Datta said the distinction between culture and philosophy is important for the Indian immigrant in the west to understand. She seeks to spread yoga to South Asians in the US.

“Our voice is important,” she said. “We have to be careful that we don’t deny our own truth.”

She hopes to generate discussion and practice within the South Asian immigrant society.

“Our philosophy encourages us to be true to our own nature, not to conform.”