A special message from QSY Director, Leena Miller Cressman:
Happy Holidays from all of us at Queen Street Yoga! 2015 was another exciting year for our studio. We celebrated our 10-year anniversary, our first group of yoga teacher trainees graduated and are now teaching all over KW, our teaching and administrative staff grew, and we’ve continued to expand our class schedule and special programming to serve our wonderful community.
This year has not been without challenges, especially related to ION construction around us and renovations in our building. We are very excited that our facade is getting a facelift, we are getting a brand new sign, and Black Arrow Cycles will be our new neighbour on the ground floor in January.
We have our eye on the long term, and we know that these changes will be wonderful for our greater community in the years to come. But in the meantime, we know that traffic and parking around the studio has been a challenge for our students. We, like many other local establishments, have noticed a decrease in business downtown corresponding with the construction, and our operating budgets are tight as a result.
Thank you for continuing to come to classes and support this learning community despite the traffic and construction. At this time, we would like to ask for your help to keep our programming going strong. In order to maintain the drop-in classes you love, and continue to offer courses, community events and workshops, we need your help! Word of mouth referrals and support are always helpful for small, independent businesses, but now they are more important than ever.
In the last several years, Queen Street Yoga has been looking more deeply into questions of privilege, oppression and cultural (mis)appropriation, and how they show up in the teaching of yoga, and in the experience of yoga studios. We have been examining how yoga was taught to us by mostly white, cis-gendered teachers, and thinking carefully about what it means to be North-American born practitioners of a tradition that has its origins in India. I define cultural (mis)appropriation as instances when members of a dominant culture take elements of a minority culture and use them outside of their original cultural context, often times reducing or commodifying those cultural aspects to “exotic” and meaningless fashion or activities. Cultural appropriation is a complex subject, and people often get defensive when it is mentioned. Recently an article was published in the Ottawa Sun about a yoga class at the University of Ottawa that was purportedly cancelled due to fears that it could be considered cultural appropriation. The Ottawa Sun later printed a retraction and reported that the class was cancelled due to low attendance, but that did not stop the viral media-storm in which many white columnists and writers derided the whole idea that yoga could be considered cultural (mis)appropriation. 
Fast-forward to the present moment, where colourful felt hearts litter every surface of my home, are pinned to every piece of clothing, and stacks of which are stuffed into every pocket and bag. In the past two months I have become a regular giver of hearts. I pin them on parked bicycles, gift them to cashiers, offer them to children and parents, and drop them on my yoga students’ mats.
and during the last year I have also seen massage used to help Alzheimer’s patients return to a sense of self and aid anxiety sufferers in feeling control over their symptoms. Massage with a trusted therapist can be an experience of healthy and safe touch. As adults we may experience less touch in our lives than we did as children, and therapeutic touch can be an important part of experiencing our bodies.
The Branches 