Yoga Angels International, YAI began offering yoga in 1997 to California schools, corporations, and recreation centers. YAI designs five-star yoga and wellness programming for adults and children. Through our top-notch yoga teachers’ training and certification, we focus on sustainability and our foundation of creating and delivering quality self-development programs internationally.
Our local partner in Jamaica and Africa provides wellness to corporate staff, yoga teachers training, retreats, daily classes, and community wellness events. YAI has been contracted and successfully delivered programs in schools with LAUSD, the City of Beverly Hills California 2012-2020, Sagicor Bank Staff 2011-2018, and OAS and USAID 2015-2018. YAI serves many clients from the United Nations to youth correctional facilities.
Yoga Angels International has existed on passion, dedication, and love. We are proud to have created sustainability within our daily lives as a family, and as a community, while others benefited from our resilience and focus. We are proud to find equilibrium throughout the chaos as we unselfishly continue to serve and broaden our community outreach through (YAF) Yoga Angels Foundation.
Sticking to our mission of inclusivity with unconventional programming thinking out of the box integrating our programs into places where wellness isn’t conventionally found. We enter communities planting the seeds of wellness and yoga where they are most needed. YAI has been consistent with serving impoverished communities regardless of our financial constraints and life changes. Since 1997 Subhadra has continuously shared yoga and wellness in unconventional places without bias.
YAI teaches Training program is one of the best training worldwide dedicated over two decades to upgrading and reinventing the curriculum to ensure its universal approach for aspiring teachers. We have implemented a refresher, and scholarship program focusing on consistently giving back to the teachers and community.
The refresher program provides a lifetime membership for all teachers to retake any portion of the teacher training at their convenience at no additional cost, creating sustainability with our teachers and community worldwide. Teachers save on education, stay updated with curriculum progression, and sustain their self-practice and teachings which undoubtedly become challenging over the years. Our common feedback is how a lifetime of friendship and community is forged. Locals who cannot afford the training cost are given partial and full scholarships. YAI stays true to our mission and seven core values which are foundation, support, community, manifestation, authenticity, observation, and nurturing.
Yoga Angels International founder Sandra “Subhadra” Griffiths is an immigrant from Jamaica. Her childhood and adolescence were marked by parental abandonment, sexual assault, physical abuse, and other traumatic experiences. YAI was born out of Subhadra’s challenging life circumstances. At the tender age of 16 Subhadra entered the corporate workforce in New York as a bank teller. At age 20, a head teller and a single mother, she was determined to succeed. With two additional jobs after her work day at the bank, she also started avidly working out entering the health and fitness field.
After one year of working three jobs, she recognized she needed a change. This motivated her to become an entrepreneur working as a fitness instructor, and an exotic dancer while attending Mercy Community College.
Click here to read about Subhadra’s journey in Forbes
She moved to California and discovered yoga at age 25. Yoga became a source of healing and personal transformation for both Subhadra and her five-year-old daughter Radha. While attending Los Angeles City College Subhadra met George Pagan who introduced her to the first yoga pose and classes. They later had a son who they call Krishna Pagan. Subhadra later had two children a boy name Ganesh and a girl name Kali-Lakshmi.
Subhadra is now a mother of four young adults who grew up with yoga and wellness as their medicine and lifestyle. For almost three decades of working in various aspects of wellness, they have used wellness to heal the irreparably harmed by toxic practices such as family and gun violence, substance abuse, and mental health.
Subhadra and her children are living testimonies of the power of awareness and wellness practices. Currently, ages 18-33, an inspirational family continuing to integrate yoga and wellness into their chosen career. Exemplify the possibility to achieve success by making positive life choices. YAI’s mission is to empower, educate, and certify aspiring yoga teachers internationally.
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Yoga Angels & Great Huts promote Healthy Lifestyles and Wellness The Gleaner
Our community is built on the journey of wellness designed for the entire family at any stage in their journey: beginner, intermediate or advanced.
Our world-renowned programmes are taught by Yoga Angels certified teacher trainers and yoga instructors. All of our classes and programmes are accredited by Yoga Alliance
All our classes are well planned and streamlined by Professional Yoga Instructors and is accredited by Yoga Alliance.
Our method derives from the foundation of Iyengar and Vinyasa Flow teachings. Our style can be described as a perfect balance of alignment and flow emanating poise and Grace. Vinyasa is often thought of as a flow of yogasana frequently associated with Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar), flow yoga, and jumpings. Vinyasa is often practiced to mark new beginnings. In Astadala Yogamala (Vol. 2), Guruji writes: “The word vinyasa has two parts. Vi means separating or disjunction and nyasa means placing or putting down. Vinyasa means separating and putting down or placing in sequential order.”
Yoga Angels Style is all in the details we bring to the teaching of the postures. We have mastered breaking down each posture to build up the body’s intelligence which in turn develops the practitioner’s awareness.
With over twenty one years of apprenticeship, master teacher Subhadra Bowman moves effortlessly between workshops, teacher training, adult and children classes.
One of the best investments in myself I have ever made was Yoga Angels Teacher Trainings. It not only deepened & refreshed the foundations of my practice, I learned so much about myself. Learning how to teach was really just a byproduct of all the other gifts of the training. This training shifted my perspective on life. My yoga practice has developed into something I can practice off of the mat in my everyday life. The greatest blessing from my experience is the community surrounding Yoga Angels. I love the diverse offerings & inclusivity. It is truly a unique community. I highly recommend teachers training with Yoga Angels to anyone & everyone.
I definitely had a lot more trouble convincing my body today to use the right muscles when I needed it. Your yesterday class reminded me that I need to work on my strength and stamina as well as my stability, flexibility and overall fitness. I am glad I found you again, as I’ve been looking those past years for a “replacement teacher”. I‘ve wrapped myself in lots of fear and given up on my exercise completely, but I feel the fear is leaving bit by bit with every lesson I take. It feels invigorating and liberating. So, thank you.
