Yoga for genocide survivors

For four months in 2011, I worked as a volunteer yoga teacher for the organisation Project Air in Rwanda. Project Air is a not-for-profit organisation that has implemented a unique program to help survivors of the Rwandan genocide deal with some of the trauma and mental health issues they suffer from. Together with trauma counsellors and medical professionals from its partner organisation WE-ACTx, Project Air uses yoga to help women and children, all of whom are HIV-positive, recover from the experience of sexual and other violence.

Through the yoga it offers, Project Air helps some of the world´s most vulnerable girls and women heal their bodies and their minds. The results, after three years of working with various groups around the Rwandan capital, Kigali, have been remarkable and, in some cases, even life-saving.

My role with Project Air was to offer my voluntary service as an Ashtanga yoga teacher. I taught yoga to groups of HIV-positive women, men and children in Rwandas capital Kigali. It was an invaluable experience to be able to share the healing effects of yoga with the Rwandan people. In preparation for and throughout my stay in Rwanda I documented my thoughts and experiences in a blog, "An Ashtanga yoga volunteer in Rwanda". View some fabulous photos from my stay in Rwanda here.

Donations and support

Project Air relies on volunteers to continue its operations and yoga teaching in Rwanda. It was only thanks to the kind donations of numerous people that I was able to travel to Rwanda to continue the important work begun by previous yoga teachers. I would like to extend my deepest thanks to all of those who supported me financially, morally and also to those who donated t-shirts for the women, men and children to practice in. Your help was invaluable and made an enormous difference to hundreds of individuals in Rwanda.

Further reading

My blog "An Ashtanga Yoga volunteer in Rwanda"

To learn more about Project Air and its achievements please visit their website Project Air

For more information on yoga as therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder read my research paper "Yoga For Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Survivors of rape in violent conflict" - download as zip-file here or save directly as PDF (8mb) (right-click the link and choose "Save Link As..." to save the pdf-document to your computer).