Using yoga to transform lives

The first time Mpho Makgoba tried yoga, he didn’t much like it. It felt a bit silly, sitting on the floor with his schoolmates trying not to giggle.

“The first time we did yoga I didn’t believe in it because I thought yoga is for white people, not for us blacks,” he says. “But I started doing it and I started focusing better, especially when I was doing meditation. I got chance to think about the bad things and the good things and how to solve problems, and it helped me focus on my studies.”

Makgoba says his yoga lessons at Alexandra High School reduced his stress and made him more mentally alert and physically stronger. It has also given him a gap-year job after he passed matric with no career plan. Yoga4Alex, the organisation behind the classroom sessions, is paying him to run after-school maths and book clubs for younger pupils, and to help them with their yoga. “I want to help them succeed in life like it’s helping me succeed in mine,” he says.

Yoga4Alex teaches Kundalini yoga, which creates a sense of well-being in the youngsters and promotes self-confidence and self-reliance by shaping the subconscious mind,” says Dr Marianne Felix, a doctor specialising in occupational medicine.

The poverty, high unemployment and hunger that bedevils Alexandra can be too overwhelming for the youngsters to believe a better life is possible, she says. But the results of yoga in the classroom prove that they can succeed through the mental tools that yoga gives them, plus the support of the organisation behind it. “In an environment where there is frustration and negativity, yoga brings feelings of hope and optimism,” she says.

Yoga4Alex has reached thousands of youngsters since its creation in 2011. At one stage it ran classes in five schools for 2,200 students, but it’s now down to two, Alexandra High and Kwabhekilanga High, because of a lack of resources. Its three current teachers are all former students that Yoga4Alex had professionally trained at a cost of R25,000 each.

Felix could hire more teachers, but she wants to identify youngsters in the classes to become the next generation of tutors. “It’s so much stronger if we can grow it from within Alex instead of having outsiders coming in and telling Alex how to do it, so we don’t mind going slowly,” she says.

During the sessions, the kids do simple yoga moves, holding their postures and learning to breathe correctly. They end with meditation, and hopefully leave feeling calmer and more mentally resilient. “Yoga is a tool to learn how to be quiet and be with your own thoughts,” Felix says.

Kundalini works in a profound way by bringing subconscious fears and anxieties to a conscious level and teaching you how to confront those uncomfortable thoughts properly, she says. “We loosen up your spine to begin with, then hold postures for extended periods. That brings whatever you are dealing with to the fore so you know what’s really bothering you. Allowing these thoughts to come up from the subconscious and pass through you allows you to let go of fears and anger. When you confront it, it isn’t as scary and impossible as you feel it is, and you start realising there are ways to solve it,” Felix says. “First you think maybe someone else can help you solve it, then as you go more deeply into the yoga you realise  you have the ability and capacity to solve the problems yourself.”

Alexandra High School principal Zoleka Lebelo has embraced the programme because of the results she’s seeing. “To be honest, I didn’t understand it until Dr Felix made me do the yoga she was demonstrating in my office. In the few minutes she was with me I could feel a difference, and when the learners spend time with her you can feel the difference. The teachers love it too - some don't miss a class,” she says.

The sessions have instilled more discipline and a higher level of commitment to their studies, translating into better academic results, she says. Some students who were cynical also joined in once they saw how it benefitted their classmates. “The matriculants were asking for meditation before they went into the exams last year to calm them down,” Lebelo says.

Felix believes the shocking matric failure rate and high drop-out rates could be addressed through yoga if they began working with Grade 8 learners on a four-year programme. But a lack of funding is a preventing that. Yoga4Alex is supported by donors including artist William Kentridge and Discovery Health, and mostly by Felix herself. She turned her home in Waverley into the 4Living Guesthouse, and ploughs all the profits  into Yoga4Alex. She also runs Saturday classes there for the Alexandra kids, and sometimes takes in the older kids if they need a place to stay. When they first arrive in the suburb they are astonished at the quietness, she says, and realise what aspiring to a better life could mean.

The yoga also creates a community and a sense of belonging through seven after-school clubs it runs including dance, drama, maths and chess. The groups are led by Buddies like Makgoba, whose lives have been improved by yoga. They're paid to run the clubs and see it as a sponsored gap year while they figure out their next move.

Hundreds of children in these schools have problems that could be alleviated with money, kindness or emotional support, which is why Yoga4Alex has diversified into providing after-school classes, paying for extra tuition, supplying interest-free loans and offering work opportunities as Buddies or in the guesthouse. It feels like a bottomless pit of need, but Felix says she hasn’t yet felt overwhelmed. Last year, she won the Live to Give Award from 3HO, the international Kundalini Yoga Organisation.

“The yoga touches thousands, but my commitment is to get 100 children completely out of poverty with stable careers. So far 75 youngsters are on their way to better lives thanks to the organisation,” she says. “I have now got parents coming to me and saying ‘what is it about you because my child doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke and has structured his life so he’s going places’, and that’s Yoga4Alex.”

One woman, Nollin Mudau, took yoga classes with a friend at a community centre after being unemployed for six years. “We had a lot of fear – how do I take on my life, what career path do I take, and family-wise everything was upside down - and when we were doing yoga we found a place where we could talk and feel and think,” she says. “It’s difficult for everyone in Alex with money issues and you don’t know where to go for advice. So when I met Dr Marianne I thought maybe this is where I can start.” Mudau now works with the organisation teaching kiddies yoga at Gordon Primary School.

For details see www.yoga4alex.co.za.