Duane Lauritsen, of Sunshine Physio Yoga, is giving back in a big way.
The shamanic yoga nidra teacher is not only donating the admission price of $20 per participant for his Thursday night class on Dec. 17 to the Cochrane Food Bank, he has pledged to match the dollar amount raised.
“This is not the typical yoga class that you might be familiar with in terms of poses and stuff like that,” said Lauritsen. “This is a class where people rest in Shavasna, which is corpse pose, and I lead them through a body consciousness awareness program that puts them into a really deep meditation.”
Lauritsen has completed roughly two and half years of training for yoga nidra and has been offering his weekly class, Thursdays from 6:30-8:00 p.m. in the basement of Healthy Hut in Cochrane, for about one year.
The Cochrane resident of 12 years wants to use this as a way to promote the practice of yoga nidra while giving back to the community he loves.
“We’re in a terrible circumstance in our province today,” said Lauritsen. “There are a lot of people out there who are out of work.”
He says after seeing people he knows registering for food hampers, something they don’t normally do, he knew it was time to act.
“I just felt compelled to help the fellow human beings here in Cochrane. Yoga nidra is a really fantastic meditative program to get people out of their space of ‘doing’ and get them into the space of ‘being,’ even if only for a short period of time,” said Lauritsen.
Those planning to attend the class are asked to wear loose, comfortable clothing and bring a mat.
