Social Entrepreneurship
Kunga Yoga School is a social entrepreneurship business model, meaning, that it works to achieve positive social, cultural, and environmental goals in addition to profit. Typical business models measure performance through financial return, but social entrepreneurship models also take into account a positive return to society through education, service volunteering, and philanthropy.
Guided by its social mission to serve “the planet, its people, and all beings,” the Kunga Yoga School implements its core values and beliefs through this social entrepreneurship model in the following ways:
- The Kunga Yoga School educates students, teachers, and volunteers about the global state of orphaned children. KYS programs have provided volunteers, education and fundraising trips to work with orphans from Rwanda, Jamaica, Thailand and India.
- The Kunga Yoga School teaches the ethical, environmental, and health impacts of food, entertainment, clothing and lifestyle choices and promotes and supports a vegan lifestyle and diet as a practice of ahimsa, or non-harming. KYS programs have supported volunteers, education, events, and fundraising to raise awareness about legalized industry standards for animal abuse in these fields.
- The Kunga Yoga School educates students, teachers, volunteers, and underserved communities about the benefits of yoga and meditation practices. KYS programs have provided classes and fundraising for underserved communities and the organizations supporting these communities.
Music & Performing Arts
Music is found in every culture around the world, past and present, and has long been used as a vehicle to express ideas, emotions, and events. The Kunga Yoga School values music and believes that all forms of performing arts have the same goal of yoga, or union, bringing diverse groups of people together for a common understanding. Music and the arts offers us many gifts. They have the ability to build community, spread smiles from ear to ear, and move us to dance, laugh, sing along, and spread joy.
Nonviolent Communication
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a compassionate communication tool developed by Marshall Rosenberg that aims to create a safe context for connecting to others and empowers conscience giving and receiving. NVC offers a framework to build self-awareness and takes time to break through habitual ways of communicating. NVC encourages radical personal responsibility and assumes that all human beings share the same needs – that all human beings enjoy giving, that all actions are an attempt to meet needs, and that feelings reflect when our needs are being met or unmet. NVC also assumes that needs are met through relationships, that choice is internal, and that peace is found through self-connection.
Through the practice nonviolent communication, the Kunga Yoga School believes that some of the most important practices of ahimsa are nonviolent speech and empathetic listening and that we can choose how we individually act, think, listen, and speak. We can practice moving beyond judgments of “right” and “wrong” and instead focus on met or unmet needs. We practice self-empathy, we take responsibility for our actions, and we aim to make requests and care for others’ needs, not just our own.
Cruelty-free Living
As part of the social entrepreneurship model and the Kunga core beliefs and values, the Kunga Yoga School teaches the ethical, environmental, and health impacts of food, entertainment, clothing and lifestyle choices and promotes and supports a vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle and diet as a practice of ahimsa, or non-harming.
Many branches of yoga and spiritual lineage teach the practices of nonviolence, simplicity, compassion, and gratitude as the key values for a human’s personal evolution towards respect and harmony between all creatures, protection and preservation of the environment and its resources, and peace and happiness in this lifetime. A cruelty-free lifestyle, or “yogic lifestyle,” is defined as a lifestyle path of active choices that supports these values.
Global Adventures & Service Retreats
Kunga Journeys service retreats and Kunga Relax and Rejuvenate Retreats are unique yoga retreats that combine volunteering, fundraising, cultural immersion, and adventure. International Kunga Journeys are offered annually and focus on volunteering and fundraising for various orphanages in developing countries, working with the The Homes of Hopes Orphanages in Kerala, India. Kunga Journeys participants become ambassadors for the Kunga mission by working as a team on a specific volunteer project at the orphanage, and supporting the girls with their homework, reading and writing in English, as well as providing and receiving multiple hugs and PLAY!
North American Kunga Journeys work with various nonprofits that support children, animals and the environment. Kunga Journeys are challenging, rewarding, life-changing events for the participants and the children; creating cross-cultural connections and friendships that last a lifetime. Kunga Journeys was founded in 2007 as part of the Kunga Yoga School’s core platforms and directly supports their social entrepreneurship model.
The Kunga Yoga School also hosts Kunga Relax and Rejuvenate Retreats, blissful yoga retreats in exotic destinations worldwide with founder Kristin Cooper-Gulak and a select group of senior leaders. Depending on the location, retreats offer daily yoga, incredible food, time to explore nature, beach trips, adventure, service projects, and plenty of time for relaxation, hiking, hammocks, reading, massages, or whatever you choose. These retreats offer a way to relax, de-stress, volunteer locally, and connect more deeply with yourself and others while living in incredible, breathtaking natural environments.
Ayurveda
The practices of yoga and Ayurveda are considered “sister sciences” in the traditional healing and medical systems of India. Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word, which means “science of life” and, like yoga, has been practiced for more than 5,000 years.
Ayurveda teaches the prevention of disease, the rejuvenation of the bodily systems, and the extension of one’s life span. Ayurveda teaches optimal wellness through practices that incorporate the spiritual, mental and physical aspects of life. These practices are incorporated through diet, asana, meditation, pranayama, daily routines, rest, plant-based medicine, relationships and body treatments. It is an integrated, holistic approach that relies upon lifestyle patterns, changes and natural therapies.
The Kunga Yoga School incorporates the teachings of Ayurveda as a tool for students to learn how to address their individual constitutions, how to adapt the yoga practice seasonally, and how to utilize the teachings in a way that creates a sustained practice and optimal wellness for life.
Thai Yoga Massage
Thai yoga massage is a bodywork therapy based upon yoga and Ayurveda practices and is directly rooted in Indian healing traditions of Ayurvedic medicine. Thai massage is an interactive practice that uses passive stretching and gentle pressure along energy lines. Thai massage offers many benefits and can provide relief from asthma, anxiety, migraines and mental or physical tension. Likewise, Thai massage can help improve sleeping patterns, flexibility and allow for greater awareness of mind and body. Thai massage is also versatile in that it is an excellent therapy for persons young and old, active or inactive and healthy or sickly.
In today’s fast paced life, we often tend to lose touch with our mind and body. The Kunga Yoga School incorporates Thai Yoga Massage as a tool to connect with others and improve health through touch, help ease pain and suffering, and promote mind and body wellness.