About
Seattle Students Kick off Take a Breath Seattle: a campaign for a violence-free stress-free Seattle
Seattle, WA – Inspired by the enormous success of the Take Breath DC campaign www.takeabreathdc.org, the students of the Yoga and Service Club at Seattle University (SU) launch a Take a Breath Seattle campaign to beat stress and promote a violence-free stress-free Seattle.
What: The Take a Breath Seattle campaign will be officially kicked off with the Yoga Empowerment Service Plus (YES+) course hosted by the Yoga and Service Club at SU. YES+ is a highly acclaimed innovative and dynamic educational and life skills course full of fun processes and ancient techniques of yoga, breath and meditation. Students who take the course report less stress, higher grades, increased energy and improved interpersonal relationships.
Who: YES+ will be hosted by the Yoga and Service Club on campus led by student George Makarenko. George is a program manager at Microsoft building web services for microsoft support and a part-time graduate student at SU studying software engineering. He has been the president of the club over the last one year and has organized numerous de-stressor events, yoga and meditation sessions for the SU community.
Why: The Yoga Empowerment Service (YES+) program addresses the current issues of rising depression among college students including high levels of stress, suicide, and violence. Over the last 3 years, the YES+ workshop has reached thousands of students in top universities across the nation, including Stanford, Cornel, and Harvard, where students have reported increased energy, enhanced ability to juggle demanding academic and extracurricular schedules, and improved interpersonal relationships.
Most recently, media in Washington DC, such as the National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the Washington Times and local TV channels featured the success of the Take a Breath campaign there. Nearly 200 young people participated in a YES+ workshop that culminated with the biggest ever group meditation for peace event in front of the White House.
Let’s join hands to create a vioelce-free stress-free Seattle!
