Welcome to the (temporary) website Berks KarmaYoga Club
We hope you will find the information on our site helpful and encourage you to email us at BerksKarmaYoga@gmail.com should you have any further questions or decide to become a member. Mission of BKYC:The mission of BKYC is to unite and organize Berks County citizens and Berks County yoga studios in performing Karma Yoga, or selfless service, as much as we are able to given the natural restraints of time and resources. While we will be helping other communities as the occasion arises, our particular focus will be doing service work in the Berks County community. Our core values are Ahimsa (i.e. non-violence, the highest moral code of all yoga paths) and love through selfless service.
Inspired by our involvement in yoga outreach programs like Off the Mat into the World and Karma Krew, we believe that the amazing outreach projects taking place around the world can be done in Berks County by Berks County yoga practitioners and the friends and family members of these yogis.
With this intention in mind, BKYC has set the following goals:
1. Serve “at risk” or vulnerable populations in Berks County, Pennsylvania by organizing and facilitating Karma Yogi Teacher(KYT) members to teach once monthly at local institutions such as schools, shelters for abused women, nursing homes, and homeless shelters.
2. Organize and facilitate Karma Yoga Sundays in which BKYC members do a community outreach project organized and facilitated by one of the founders of BKYC one Sunday a month for approx 4 hours. Some projects may include painting buildings, serving a meal to the homeless, grooming and playing with the animals, yard work, and cleaning our local parks. We hope that members with children will find our Karma Yoga Sundays a great way to introduce their children to the values of service and giving back. Karma Yoga Sundays will be held the third Sunday of the month beginning in September.
3. Quickly organize and execute fundraising yoga classes and potlucks in response to local, national, and international natural disasters and crises. We hope to partner with local yoga studios in making these efforts possible.
4. Help local charities and non-for-profits with their own fundraising and awareness activities through advertising to our members and providing volunteer support when possible.
5. Support the charitable and karma yoga classes and projects of local yoga studios, yoga teachers, and BKYC members through advertisements and encouragement of member participation at these events.
What is Karma Yoga?
To tell you the truth, it’s a pretty profound and amazing branch of yoga having to do with big philosophical yoga topics like renunciation, the collective effects of our actions, the path to enlightenment, our relationship with the divine, etc. We need not bog you down with the details but certainly encourage you to read books such as the classic text Karma-Yoga and Bhakti Yoga by Swami Vivekananda to better familiarize yourself with the concept.
For the purpose of this club we believe the most common understanding of Karma Yoga—selfless service—suits us just fine. Karma Yoga can essentially be thought of as doing work without regard to the fruits of your action. In our case, karma yoga translates to doing service and volunteer work simply to do good in the world. We do not volunteer and do service work in order to obtain a tax-exemption, “save” the people we are helping, become famous, or brag to our friends about our high morals. Nor do we as the founders practice Karma Yoga and offer you this club so that we may fluff up our resumes or seem “more humble” or “more enlightened” than other yoga teachers. With that said, we certainly don’t begrudge anyone the good feeling, that deep inner knowing of truth, that comes with doing service work. In fact, we encourage you to join us and embrace that feeling of goodness and community.
While we plan to offer yoga classes as fundraisers and to offer free classes to organizations in the community, it is important to understand that Karma Yoga is not Hatha yoga. Hatha Yoga is the branch of yoga where you do yoga poses (we know…it’s confusing! ).
Sponsors:
BKYC is very honored and humbled by the generous sponsorship of time, space, and/or money by the following people and businesses:
Yoga Inlet www.yogainlet.com
Healing Yoga www.healingyogapa.com
Hugh and Liza Culverhouse
Randall and Cynthia Gablehouse
Cecilia Culverhouse
Michael and Katherine McGilvray
Nicholas Aynsley
