About Yoga Outreach

A Registered Canadian Charity since 2007, Yoga Outreach was founded in 1996 by a loosely knit group of yoga teachers who came together to share yoga in the BC Correctional System, Yoga Outreach has grown from this foundation, expanding to serve a diverse range of facilities. The love, commitment, and passion which began that project continues today. Yoga Outreach partners with volunteer yoga instructors, community organizations, social service agencies, and correctional facilities to provide mindfulness-based yoga programming to often overlooked adults and at-risk youth. Yoga Outreach programs are strengths-based and trauma-informed serving men, women, and youth facing challenges with mental health, addiction, poverty, violence, trauma, and imprisonment. In addition, we provide training, ongoing mentorship, and community building opportunities to yoga teachers and community support professionals to enhance the delivery of yoga in these settings. In 2012 we facilitated more than 1300 yoga classes! Hear what professionals have to say about the value of Yoga Outreach Yoga transforms people’s lives. Together we make change possible, one mat at a time. How it all began…
In 1996 Annabelle Tame, from the Prison Phoenix Trust in England, gave a talk on teaching yoga within the prison system to a group of yoga teachers from the Lower Mainland. Inspired by Annabelle’s talk and under the direction of Sandra Sammartino, a loosely knit group of yoga teachers came together to bring yoga into the correctional system within BC. YO programs quickly gained notoriety and it was not long before we had programs in mental health, addiction’s recovery, women’s and youth groups.  In its early years YO programs were taught by graduates of Sandra’s teacher’s training program. Click here to visit Sandra’s website. Yoga Outreach began as a labour of love, supported by yoga teachers who taught from a place of love. We received much more than we gave. Teaching with YO taught us the joy of giving and receiving, and expanded our hearts.
In 2004 Sandra turned the reigns of Yoga Outreach over to Beth Sampson. It was Sandra and her students that planted the seeds, and in turn it has been Beth, that nurtured our garden into maturity. Beth’s commitment and dedication to YO and its vision of possibility has continued to drive the organization. Serving first as the Executive Director and now stewarding YO as the Board President, she continues to inspire and guide us as we grow.