Since PYP first opened its doors in September 2018, our space, our members, the numbers of students who come into the space each week, and the number of teachers on our roster have grown significantly. We love the expansion and breadth of our community and our offerings. Something that we have always wanted to prioritize is the depth of community engagement, relationships, and all around quality of what we offer. One of the challenges of having a community that keeps growing in size is how to maintain intimacy, accountability, and connection.
So we’ve decided to create this blog designated for teasing out ideas, asking questions, and providing space for conversation. We want to offer the why behind the multitude of offerings we provide, our values, and what we want to embody as a community. It is an opportunity for us to deepen the understanding between us of what we are all a part of when we show up to The Portland Yoga Project.
The fundamental organizing principles of our business are all in our name. We are a local studio in Portland, Maine, which operates on the unceded land of the original stewards of this place—the Wabanaki people. We take the concept of place seriously as we understand that to have a place is to have a home and to have a home is to take responsibility to the land, history, and people that make up that place.
We are a studio that offers yoga classes. But the “yoga” in our name is not just about the fact that we offer classes in which people can practice yoga asana in 60 minute increments. We also offer barre and matte and workshops and trainings and events that are not yoga asana. But the word yoga remains at the center of our identity as a community because we are committed to practicing the essence of yoga. In everything we do we want to engage in the practices that bring wholeness, union, reconciliation, and connection. And we want to respectfully and humbly learn and apply the tools that have been handed down to us by this ancient tradition and that have been studied and applied and honed and explored by teachers and students that span time and space far beyond our own community.
A project is defined as a set of actions and goals that are taken in order to achieve a particular aim. Our project is to facilitate a community in-process, constituted by people who are in-process. And our commitment is to make sure that the trajectory of our process is toward the common good.
We hope you’ll continue to join us in this project, whether you are regularly attending classes or reading from afar. Read along, ask questions, share your thoughts. We’ll be writing monthly!