‘Sprouting new limbs’: Project Yoga Richmond founder works to reestablish its mission

Peggy Stansbery, Staff Writer

Yoga is the vehicle that connects people to the source; it is the action that “allows us to realize who we are,” said Jonathan Miles, founder of Project Yoga Richmond. 

“I felt like yoga had done a lot for me and being in the yoga community felt really safe to me and really loving,” Miles said. “I just thought, ‘how can we take this togetherness and love that is in the yoga community and introduce it to the broader community?’”

Financial struggles from COVID-19 caused Project Yoga Richmond to shut down operations in September 2022, according to Miles. He currently works to reestablish Project Yoga Richmond as a community organization, rebuild partnerships and rebuild the brand — he felt it had become “too corporate” and “too big” for what they wanted to do. 

There will be a name change as well to reflect a more “accurate” description of their mission, according to Miles. 

Miles created Project Yoga Richmond in 2010 to teach people that yoga and its principles and philosophies are available to everyone, Miles said. 

“It was really just to give back everything that yoga had given to me,” Miles said. “Particularly at the beginning, I wanted people who look like me to have access to these practices.”

While the operations have shut down, the entity is fully operational. It is in a place of stasis right now and they are healing, growing and sprouting new limbs, Miles said.

The next chapter of Project Yoga Richmond will include more than just yoga, along with a better representation of yoga and new programs and events that are more in alignment with what the community needs, Miles said. 

“When I say the community, I do not mean the yoga community because there is enough yoga to go around for the yoga community, but some of the marginalized communities in town,” Miles said. “I want them to have access to these practices to these philosophies to mindfulness.”

Miles wants to cultivate a spiritual community and seeks to achieve the original concept: creating a bond between the yoga community and the greater community, he said. He aims to create a ripple effect of more mindfulness, positivity, cleanliness and care for the planet. 

“When we start to incorporate more mindfulness and more mindful practices in our lives, that is going to affect everyone in a positive way,” Miles said. 

In pursuit of Project Yoga Richmond’s reestablishment, Miles will collaborate with Duron Chavis’s 12-week youth urban gardening class this spring by integrating mindfulness into the program, according to Miles. 

“I feel like it’s a great thing for Project Yoga Richmond to be in collaboration with an organization that is embedded in the youth,” Chavis said.

Historically, Project Yoga Richmond taught adults the benefits of yoga, according to Chavis. 

The 12-week program — geared toward 12 to 18 year olds — teaches community members how to run an urban farm and provides them with the resources to do so, according to Chavis. 

Part of the program’s work is reconnecting people back to the land and nature, and mindfulness is an “essential component” of doing this and it is “imperative” to get young people connected to those practices, Chavis said. 

“I think that creating opportunities for young people to really do that inner work that is necessary to be a productive citizen in the world is something that we need,” Chavis said. “It is great to see Project Yoga Richmond engaging in this type of work, considering that there are not many programs for young people that deal with mindfulness explicitly.”

Project Yoga Richmond volunteer Cristina Villega said she’s excited to see how Project Yoga Richmond connects with the community in new ways through partnerships with other local nonprofits and service based organizations. 

Villegas found that Project Yoga Richmond’s accessibility provided a nourishing source of community due to its donation-based yoga classes, diverse instructors and modifications during yoga classes, she said. 

“It was accessible to so many people,” Villegas said. “It really opened the doors for everyone to practice yoga no matter their budget or their physical abilities because the classes were very accommodating.”

When Villegas told her friend — who had volunteered at Project Yoga Richmond — about their rebranding, she got “really excited” and expressed she had found a lot of “connection” and “fulfillment” through it, she said.

“I just hear this story a lot from people I have volunteered with and worked with — that sense of connection and community — so I am really excited that it is coming back and it did not just disappear,” Villegas said.