A New Way of Giving…

I want to tell you a story. I promise it will be short. One late autumn day in 2020, as I sat looking at my WhatsApp messages from friends and family asking “what online yoga class should I take? do you know anything about Qi Gong? I want to become more (flexible, strong, calm, fill in the blank), what do you recommend? I’ve heard about somatic therapy, how do I find someone to work with?” and so on and so forth, I finally came to the conclusion that the answer that they were all looking for was Me.

So, I opened Healing Motion. A for-profit business that is a space for trauma informed movement based practices that assist people in discovering their innate wisdom, restoring their embodied strength, and transcending to holistic wellbeing through Yoga, Thai Massage, Dance, Qi Gong, Somatic Therapy, and Community Class Series’ and Individual Sessions. However, I wanted to be very clear that this for-profit was linked to something bigger.

Healing Motion dedicates itself to donating 25% of it’s profits to supporting Legacy Motion, a 501(c)3 US based non-profit that offers Trauma Informed Yoga, Embodied Practices, Braver Spaces Consultations, Teacher Trainings in Trauma Informed Movement Practices, and collaborations with likeminded organizations worldwide, to bring restorative movement based methods and tools to communities and individuals impacted by trauma. But this business model is tricky.

Firstly, I wanted to be sure that my coupling between the beloved non-profit that I founded in 2016 and this new for-profit was ethical. It is not about making money off of what I offer to others. The model highlights the support that can come from each of us as we also work towards our own restoration process, self agency, and self regulation.

We are still finding our groove, and figuring out how this will all work both in the books, and out in the communities. But I believe that this model can be beneficial for us all. When you buy from a market that is purchasing their food from local farms with environmentally friendly practices, that employ those in the community, change happens. Shouldn’t our mental, physical, and emotional health plant the same seeds of assistance and collective wellbeing that a market could while also nourishing ourselves? I think so.