Saskatchewan Indigenous Yoga Association stretches across cultural boundaries

Back in 2016, Saskatoon yoga instructor and philanthropist David Edney approached the Saskatoon Tribal Council with the idea of creating a scholarship program to train Indigenous yoga instructors. 

That was the very start of what would eventually become the Saskatchewan Indigenous Yoga Association (SIYA). This summer the SIYA completed its third round of yoga instructor training, with 30 people now having taken the course. 

The goal of the 200-hour certification program is to train Indigenous yoga instructors, who can then bring the practice back into their own communities. 

Dawn Deguire is Cree-Métis and a member of Muskoday First Nation, and a co-founder of the SIYA. In an interview with CBC Radio's Saskatchewan Weekend, she said some of the highlights this year included teaching at the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival and visiting a Hindu temple in Saskatoon. 

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"It was just really interesting for the students to get the wheels turning in their head around their own cultural beliefs and teachings, and how there are a lot of alignments and similarities on the daily living aspects," Deguire said. 

According to Deguire, there are intersections between the yoga and her personal philosophies as an Indigenous person. 

"The big one for me is in our teachings. It's about remembering who we are. There's a lot of similarities in the belief systems of kind of a karmic life cycle, and that our spirit lives on in many lifetimes," she said. 

"It's about understanding ourselves as unified and interconnected with all of creation."

A cycle of healing

Harmony Johnson-Harder, who is Cree-Métis and a member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation, also commented on the similarities. She's one of the newly trained instructors. 

"That was one of the key things that I brought back — the similarities of building community, how you take care of yourself, your mind, your body, your soul and how that contributes to the community. How when you're living within your body, that heals trauma," Johnson-Harder said. 

Johnson-Harder said that she lived with denial about facing depression and anxiety for much of her life. She said the yoga training gave her tools to work through her triggers. 

She's also an artist and owner of Down to Earth Expressive Arts & Yoga. She remembers a recent moment when she was having trouble focusing on a painting that was commissioned. 

"I just did a small practice, maybe 20 or 25 minutes of just resetting myself, breathing, getting back into my body, aligning all of that restless energy," she said. 

"And I came back in and I was able to complete that painting." 

Hearing about moments like those is important for Deguire.

"That's exactly what we're here to do," she said, "to overall become healed as individuals. Because healed individuals are what create healed communities."