Julia brought business experience and a vision, as a newly trained yogi with close ties to the yoga community, for a socially engaged community yoga training program. She taught yoga classes at CommunityHealth, a free clinic in Englewood, and served as a co-founder, along with Greg and three others, of the Socially Engaged Yoga Network.

Dr. Jones brought her experience as a community physician practicing at the Chicago Family Health Center in South Chicago, and her connections as an academic family physician at University of Chicago Medicine. She partnered with Greg to bring yoga classes to her health center and envisioned equitable access to the healing benefits of yoga for all communities.

Greg brought his experience as a yoga instructor, grant writer, research coordinator, social worker, and administrator who envisioned access to yoga for a community that had been living in a yoga desert. His citywide network and volunteer experience providing staff self-care and burnout prevention workshops with Chicago organizations brought key partnerships.

Together they founded YogaCare.

Initial grants from the Institute for Translational Medicine, the Chicago Area Schweitzer Fellowship Program, and the AMA Foundation allowed them to expand the classes offered in their two South Side Chicago sites. In collaboration with Dr. Sonia Oyola of the University of Chicago Medicine, they integrated research for class participants on the health impact of yoga and barriers to access (1).

In spring 2014, they partnered with University of Chicago Booth School of Business students Kristin Cho (Booth ‘2015) and Kevin Stephens (Pritzker School of Medicine 2015, Booth 2014), to enter the Social New Venture Challenge. Over the course of a semester, they chose a name, developed a business model, and learned to make a pitch, landing in the top three finalists.

The very next day they brought their pitch to Goodcity’s IntoSomethingGood competition and earned startup funding and the opportunity to join the nonprofit business incubator, which served as their fiscal sponsor and organizational home until 2018.

Dr. Oyola served as the first board president, with South Chicago class participant Nubia Ptah as Vice President, and the full SNVC/founding team completing the board.

YogaCare was incorporated as a nonprofit and officially launched on November 7, 2014, later becoming fully independent operating under its own 501(c)(3) status on July 1, 2018.

In addition to Community Yoga Classes — frequently affiliated with health centers and social service organizations, YogaCare also supports:

Scholarships & Training — First launched in 2015, this program offers full 200-hr teacher training certification and continuing education training scholarships in partnership over the years with Live Work Yoga, YogaSkills, Yoga Circle, Marigold Yoga (formerly Ganesha Yoga Chicago), Yogaview, and others as well as our in-house Spanish Language Teacher Training Program launched in 2021 with a linguistic and cultural adaptation of Marigold Yoga’s curriculum.

YogaCARES Employee Wellness Services — Formerly known as Self-Care for Health Care, this array of workshops, consulting, and e-learning services launched in 2016 to provide self-care training and mindfulness-based solutions for healthcare and social service professionals to prevent burnout, improve wellness, and promote work-life balance.

Socially Engaged Yoga Network — SEYN was founded in 2013 by a group of socially engaged yogis who saw the need for coming together to mobilize yoga teachers for social change. Co-founders included Julia Pedersen, Yoli Maya Yeh, Marty Clemmons, Carol Horton, and Greg Van Hyfte. Since 2014, SEYN has been operating under the umbrella of YogaCare.

(1) Moscoso D, Goese D, Van Hyfte GJ, Mayer Z, Cain L, Kobiernicki F, Cano-Garcia A, Unzueta C, Ormaza LT, Jones K, “The impact of yoga in medically underserved populations: A mixed-methods study.” Complementary Theories in Medicine. 2019 Apr;43:201-207.