For the love of it…

Jasmine Chehrazi is the founder of the Yoga District collective of yoga studios, and founder of Yoga Activist, a nonprofit outreach organization dedicated to improving accessibility and trauma sensitivity in yoga and mindfulness instruction. Jasmine LOVES the Yoga District community, and she would probably be insane without it. She has trained with teachers from a wide variety of yoga traditions (Dharma, Power, Vinyasa, Kundalini, and Sivananda) and taught students of diverse backgrounds (from homeless shelter residents to White House staff).

In her role as a yoga educator, Jasmine serves on the Faculty at George Washington University, advising yoga teachers in training. She also directs the yoga teacher training programs at Yoga District. Jasmine believes yoga instructors have a responsibility to adapt their classes with sensitivity to individual student needs, while also dealing with the realities of group instruction and honoring the integrity of their yoga tradition. As an advisor in continuing education yoga programs, to yoga teacher trainees, and to experienced yoga teachers, it’s Jasmine’s goal to skillfully share yoga’s teachings and assist others in doing the same.

Jasmine’s best teachers are her students… she is grateful for their patience, sweat, hard work, and understanding as she learns along with them on this crazy path of mindfulness and liberating

confusion. She keeps the studios cheap because she knows what it’s like to really, really need a yoga class but not have $20 to spend on it, not wanting to cut a coupon for it, not wanting to ask for special treatment. Jasmine believes it’s a basic right to have access to mindfulness resources.

Before starting up the studios, Jasmine worked at an office for ten years (starting in high school, working through her college years and beyond), which drove her nuts after a while. When she took the leap and quit her day job, she started volunteering at a nearby yoga studio in exchange for free classes. Jasmine soon realized that she was crazy enough to run her own yoga studio. Since she wanted classes to stay cheap, she took up other jobs including working in restaurants and bars, whatever it took to help make ends meet through the studios’ growing pains. Thanks to the generosity of teachers, the volunteer staff, students, and beneficent landlords, the studios have flourished for over five years, a testament to the power of community-based, non-hierarchical, non-corporate, love-based initiatives.

Along the way, Jasmine met Steve, Michelle, Aqeel, and Hannah… super-talented, hard-working yoga teachers who have also dedicated their lives to sharing yoga… so Jasmine invited them to join Yoga District’s Board of Directors and run a studio in their neighborhood. Jasmine loves DC and the neighborhoods the studios serve, having spent years living and/or working in each of the studios’ neighborhoods. Jasmine now lives in the Atlas District and can probably be found at Argonaut on Taco Tuesdays… or on her mat.