Wilmington Yoga in Leland is a Worldwide Influence
When Wilmington Yoga opened its sister location in Leland in April of 2017, they were excited to serve Leland residents. Yet they were even more enthusiastic about introducing Leland to all the good yoga can do. Some of the side benefits of yoga at Wilmington Yoga may surprise you. Sure, yoga offers increased flexibility, mind/body connection, and fitness. But at this yoga studio, your practice could help orphaned children around the world through Homes of Hope – India.
Wilmington Yoga decided to expand into Leland after seeing how many new communities were being built, especially intrigued by the addition of the Hawthorne at Leland nearly across the street from where the new yoga studio is currently located.
“[The Wilmington Yoga team] just fell in love with the area,” Ali Callahan, Executive Director for Wilmington Yoga, explains. “There is such great energy here!”
Wilmington Yoga staff onsite for the Homes of Hope fundraiser. L to R: Kristen Stritter, Ali Callahan, Karen Treinen.
Photography by Allison Barrett Carter.
Today, Wilmington Yoga in Leland offers about twenty-five classes a week, and the first Saturday of every month they hold a free introductory class. While the schedule offers classes for all levels of fitness and experience, Callahan shares that currently, the most popular classes are pilates and gentle yoga with meditation.
While the Leland studio is smaller than the Wilmington location (at 5329 Oleander Drive), Callahan and her team of teachers feel that this is a good thing. “There is a chance for more one on one attention here,” Callahan says. “It is smaller, and more intimate.”
Yet being small doesn’t preclude being mighty. Since 2006, Wilmington Yoga has been working with Homes of Hope – India and has brought that outreach to the Leland location.
Homes of Hope – India, based in Wilmington, has been helping orphaned, abandoned and trafficked girls in India by providing shelter, food, supplies, medical care and education. The organization has built seven orphanages, with five more currently under construction. They have also built a school.
Wilmington Yoga helps in two ways: providing financial resources towards projects identified by the nuns who run the programs in India and going to India at the end of every year to help with a service project and to practice yoga with the girls.
“We believe in practice here, serve there,” Callahan says. “When you practice yoga you end up feeling a sense of wanting to connect in a bigger way, to change the landscape.”
The “Kunga Retreats,” as Wilmington Yoga refers to them, are open to anyone with the heart to go and are usually the last week of December (this year the retreat will be December 28, 2018 – January 5, 2019, in Kerala, India).
The in-town fundraisers are much easier for many to participate in, of course, and are held by Wilmington Yoga twice a year, once at the Wilmington location and once at the Leland location. The fundraiser days consist of free yoga classes and raffle prizes. All money earned goes towards a goal specified by the nuns of Homes of Hope – India. This year (2018) the goal is to raise money towards a garden at one of the homes in India. One year alone, Callahan recalls, Wilmington Yoga was able to raise $5,000.
While that amount of money is rare, the fundraiser weekend that recently occurred at the Leland location went well. In fact, the total raised in two days was over $800. (Raffle prizes this year included half-off yoga teacher training, a 10-class pass, and half-off a Kunga Retreat.)
Callahan encourages everyone to come try out the Leland location and to include yoga in their lives. “Yoga will change your life! If you are breathing, you are doing yoga,” she laughs. “But it provides flexibility, relaxation, injury prevention, community, purpose, mindfulness, awareness…:
Plus, you could be helping out girls in India. There can’t be better reason to get on the mat.
Learn more about Wilmington Yoga in Leland:
497 Olde Waterford Way
Suite 200
Leland, NC 28451
(910) 769-2289
wilmingtonyogacenter.com/leland-location
Learn more about Homes of Hope – India:
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