About
Offering the Difference
Yoga for Educators
To the educators, faculty, and staff of WISD: We hear you, and we want to meet your need and request for more balance and wellness. Thank you for all your hard work on behalf of so many children and youth.
For the second year, The Greater Mercy Foundation honors you with a response from a network of collaborators to provide yoga for educators and the community at-large.
The Greater Mercy Foundation will host yoga classes in partnership with WISD and Creekhaven Inn and Spa. Classes will be held OUTDOORS at 400 Mill Race Lane, Wimberley, TX, 78676. In inclement weather, the class will be moved to an alternate location on the property.
Classes will occur once a week, Wednesdays from 4:15-5:15 pm starting September 18, 2024 through May 8, 2025 (no classes the week of Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, or Spring Break week). All classes are donation-based for attendees. Contribute what your heart feels called to offer in support of this project.
2024-25 Yoga for Educators is possible through The Greater Mercy Foundation and mutually beneficial relationships with Wimberley ISD SHAC and The Wellness Center, Creekhaven Inn and Spa, local yoga teachers, and community donations. This project benefits our hard working often over-extended educators as well as the community at-large.
Project History
Beginning in 2022, we began having conversations with Wimberley ISD through one of our Wisdom Circle gatherings. With Wimberley ISD (WISD) stakeholders that included mental health professionals, the Wellness Center, and the School Health Advisory Committee, we began discussing the important topic of providing mental health and wellbeing of students and faculty. Among other outcomes, the impetus for the Yoga for Educators project derived from a district faculty and staff survey conducted during the 2022-23 school year by the WISD SHAC (School Health Advisory Committee). One of the most compelling results of the survey was that educators requested more support for their overall mental health and wellbeing. Yoga classes were one of the most common and specific write-in request to support health and wellbeing.
With this request in mind, WISD was granted funding from Wimberley Education Foundation (WEF) for the 2023-34 school year to fund a portion of this project. TGMF secured a community partner who donated space for classes. TGMF also matched the WEF donated funding, provided yoga equipment and coordinated classes, and instructors each week.
The goals of this program are to offer donation-based (pay what you can) yoga for educators and the community. The yoga class will take place at a centrally located, easily accessible off-campus site. Classes are offered through generous community partnerships and each class offering is supported through donations. Our weekly class is specifically offered on a day and at a time that is most convenient for our WISD employees. While we cannot accommodate every circumstance, based on the feedback from district personnel, we have determined Wednesdays at 4:15pm at a centrally located venue to be the best aim in terms of seeking partnerships to support this program. We seek partnerships that support the project scope.
Since the pandemic, local community yoga offerings have been significantly reduced in terms of the number of classes and locations. For those working a more traditional Monday-Friday work schedule, late afternoon and evening classes have been difficult to find. Additionally, those working in education are suffering burn-out that often leads to poor mental and physical wellbeing. This is also true for many in the workforce who are looking for more opportunities for a more balanced lifestyle. Yoga classes are one answer toward this balance.
In order to meet the need specifically in service to educators’ requests and to also fill this larger community need for more yoga offerings, TGMF extended this weekly yoga class to include the larger community. The first year of this project offered free classes to educators and district employees, and requested donations from other community participants.
TGMF’s yoga project provides health and wellbeing support through a regular, affordable, local yoga class for those, like educators, experiencing burn-out. Ultimately, through this project, we aim to support the wellbeing of those who provide daily support to our children and youth in the classroom.
The Greater Mercy Foundation and its partners share a mutual desire to collaborate to create impactful and uplifting programs within our community. We connect around various projects to preserve our natural spaces and highlight the connection between human health and the health of our land and water, and the spaces that we share to build relationships and learn.
TGMF will manage the classes, contract the teachers for the classes, ensure all participants fill out liability waivers, supply minimal yoga equipment for those who do not have their own, and collect donations at the door. Class size will be limited to 40 participants.
This project and the collaborators have come together at a time when the support and balance will make a meaningful difference in the lives of educators and all of the students that they serve. This collaboration has the potential to touch every corner of our community. We are grateful for all the stakeholders who have and will help make Yoga for Educators a success.
Past Project Partnerships
The Watershed 2023-24
For more details about the Watershed Association and their project, please follow the link to learn more about the New Water-Focused Community Gathering Space.
meet our yoga teachers
Each teacher brings unique gifts our classes. The array of talented instructors have helped build our community, guiding us in movement and form, inviting us into our bodies and spirit, opening us to love and laughter, and leading us toward our own nature. We are so grateful for your leadership. Meet the Yoga Teachers
This project has unfolded so beautifully. Each teacher, participant, partner, and donor has been an integral part in co-creating a yoga community.