Communities Rizing (CR) is a next generation 200-hour mindfulness based, trauma-informed hatha yoga and meditation Yoga Teacher Training.

This unique and transformative training is built on a social justice and addiction recovery framework and focuses on the values, methods, and skills needed to create experiential laboratories to supportively guide ourselves and others toward our natural human birthright of health, wholeness, freedom and fulfillment.

CR is for anyone looking to teach and/or deepen the study of the philosophy and somatic practices of yoga as a tool in support of creating more health and well-being in ourselves and the world.  Through understanding and application, yoga teachers, mental health professionals, addiction recovery specialists, social workers, activists, educators and many more can discover how to deepen their own practice and offer these teachings and skill building practices in our communities to help build capacity and resilience.

Your guides in this training are Nikki Myers and Rolf Gates.  They are grounded in study and practice from Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Tantra, the Sri Vidya and Kripalu yogic traditions, along with lived experience through addiction and recovery.  Rolf and Nikki are extraordinary teachers who between them have more than 60 years of yoga and meditation teaching and training experience and more than 50 years of long-term recovery.

Nikki Myers is an MBA, Yoga Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Addictions Recovery Specialist, and Ayurvedic Yoga Specialist and Founder of Y12SR:  The Yoga of 12 Step Recovery.  More than all else, she is passionate and committed to the deepest levels of health and healing for all.  She has been a featured speaker at the International Association of Yoga Therapist (IAYT) conference,  International Conference on Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the 2022 Clinton Global Initiative.  She was named a Yoga Journal Game Changer and is an honored recipient of the esteemed NUVO Cultural Visionary Award.

Rolf Gates, author of Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well—as well as the best-selling Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga and Meditations on Intention and Being: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga, Mindfulness, and Compassion—is a leading voice in contemporary yoga his work is used as a resource for yoga students and teachers worldwide. He conducts vinyasa intensives and 200- and 300-hour teacher training internationally. A former US Army Ranger and social worker specializing in addiction, Rolf brings his eclectic background to his teaching and life.

Communities Rizing 200-hour YTT provides a direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to creating a more joyful and equitable world.

• • Yoga as a tool for individual, family, community, institutional and systems level transformation
  • Framework for sustainable change based on The Buddhist Peace Fellowships’  ‘Block, Build, Be’ model
  • The foundational teachings in Sankhya, the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita to understand the yogic view of the mind and how the conditioned mind is the root of addiction, injustice and all dysfunction 
  • How to use the tools and practices of yoga to change ‘the operating system’.  
  • How ‘the issues live in our tissues’
  • How to teach and practice to create lasting change
  • The importance of yogic relaxation and restorative practices
  • How trauma affects the body/mind and impacts individuals, families and communities
  • Nervous system  dysregulation and practices to restore regulation. 
  • Therapeutic principles that will allow students to practice safely.
  • Harm reduction in yoga and wellness spaces.
  • Yogic breathing and meditation techniques to prepare the body/mind for asana AND meditation.
  • Lifestyle offerings from Ayurveda that support building capacity and resilience
  • What it means to sit comfortably in meditation for 45 minutes; experiencing how it feels to “rest in stillness.”
  • AND much, much more.