Co-Create Lotusland’s Next Home! ❤️🙏🏼
Dearest Lotusland, students, friends and family, neighbors and beautiful beings everywhere!
We are so excited to FINALLY announce that after 4 years at our tiny temple, we are spreading our wings down the block to our gorgeous new neighborhood nest at 1234 Valencia Street between 24th & 23rd (the old Yoga Tree, now Library and soon to be New Lotusland Yoga Center SF!) and we are fundraising to co-create our sacred space together. We have cherished every moment of being our intimate sacred sanctuary with you and none of the personal attention and community connection you experience will be lost – Now you can expect two practice rooms for so many more class times, options and learning opportunities! We will have two, additional treatment rooms for body work and yoga privates, a Lotusland Tea Lounge and a Lotusland Lending Library – so we can share the Lotusland mission in the Mission – to make the transformative practices of Yoga available and accessible to ALL – with even more wonderful souls in our City.
Our preliminary urgent fundraising goal of $50,000 by September 1st, is to help with the construction costs for two beautiful practice rooms for so many more incredible classes, workshops and trainings all day from 7am to 8:30pm – with your favorite Lotusland teachers and new teachers as well. There will also be two healing modality rooms for massage, acupuncture, Ayurvedic consults and private yoga therapy.
Your generous donations will be used for:
✦ Actual construction costs of the walls and doors – Electrical re-rewiring and lighting, permits, contractor, architect and permitting costs, Iyengar rope wall!
✦ Painting and our trademark murals (we will also have a community painting project!) with the beautiful artwork of local artist Twin Walls Mural
Please donate what you can! Every amount from $10 – $10,000 will be so deeply appreciated to help meet our goal. This Yoga Center is for YOU. We are offering some wonderful gifts for every donation – expect weekly updates with links to download free classes! Whether you live in San Francisco, practice Yoga or not – we know we can do this together.
Please join us and help us meet our first fundraising goal for construction costs and spread the word by sharing this link with anyone you know that can help, to bring the Yoga practices you love to more people in our community – especially during such tumultuous times when we need these practices and each other the most.
This will be so much more than a studio, we are creating a center for organizing – serving and uplifting our city. For every beautiful being we impact, we know we generate a ripple of change that can reach their families, communities, and society to spread more beauty, love and light into our world.
With your support, we can expand the impact of Lotusland Yoga SF and empower you and more people to become the happiest and healthiest versions of themselves, creating a place and a community where we see the best of being human. Please help us keep our vision and special space alive to touch more people’s lives and inspire even more waves of transformation and healing throughout our city!
An Ode to Our Continuing Lineage of Service:
Formerly Laughing Lotus Yoga Center on 16th Street, the new incarnation of our 27 year Yoga history invites you to explore different styles, levels and practices of yoga on a fully sliding-scale and donation basis. Our mission is to make the timeless practices of Yoga accessible to all, in an intentionally inclusive and more intimate space that is dedicated to offering you more personal attention and fostering community connection. Instead of one huge room, with 70 students, that is the norm in most Yoga studios, we are committed to limiting our class sizes in our new bigger studio with two rooms – a smaller space for 20 students and bigger one for 40.
All our classes and teachers aim to support and deepen your practice by honoring Yoga’s roots and evolution of personal liberation by sharing all 8 limbs and the many paths and practices of Yoga as as a way of life. From basic flow to begin your practice to advanced 2/3 classes to challenge yourself, you will stretch and strengthen your body, open your heart, connect with your spirit and quiet your mind. Through a wholistic approach to the practices of Yoga that addresses the whole person with the intention of being of benefit to our world. In every offering you can expect expert teachings to embody Yoga’s essential philosophy of union with the Self and the universe through asana, pranayama, mantra, mudra, meditation and relaxation. Whether you prefer a traditional Iyengar Yoga Class with props and precision, a fun, sweaty vinyasa practice with a soulful playlist and chanting, arm balances and inversions or a class that is more meditative and nurturing with spacious silence and deep relaxation – to workshops and teacher trainings— We’ve got you covered!
The Lotus’ Story:
Lotusland Yoga SF, began with our founder, Jasmine Tarkeshi opening Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in NYC with Dana Flynn in 1999 and 2006 in SF on 16th Street that closed in 2020 due to the pandemic. After so many personal and collective losses – the passing of our beautiful manager and sister, Ariana Tarkeshi and lead teacher Alex Crow – like the lotus, rising from the mud of grief – Jasmine with co-creator, Zoë Elena, re-opened as Lotusland Yoga SF at 1360 Valencia in 2022. Keeping the soul of LLSF alive, we evolved into a fully sliding-scale and by donation community yoga center to make yoga and it’s allied practices of movement, music, meditation and mantra available to everyone in our Mission and 24th Street Neighborhood. With Yoga En Español, Community Yoga for Youth and Pre-Natal, Love Saves the Day benefit classes to support Non-Profits and causes, along with BIPOC and work-trade Scholarship Programs for our Yoga Teacher Trainings, we are cultivating confident healers and leaders to serve their communities with love.
In our 3 years as a culturally diverse – women-owned and operated San Francisco sanctuary for physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing and education – we’ve seen people of all ages from all walks of life become healthier and happier and more at peace with themselves in the midst of the infinite challenges we face.
Our classes, workshops and trainings teach people to live a life of inner and outer harmony through the vast ancient practices of Yoga and approach our many obstacles as a way to break through the limitations of our minds, improve health, celebrate one another, and come together as a community of like minded people to be of benefit to our world.
Help Lotusland Yoga SF Blossom into a Bigger Space for all of US!
Ok, we know your number one question is WHEN?!?! Knowing everything takes longer – We are aiming for a big and beautiful opening celebration in early January 2027 and will share all the details as soon as the are revealed
We are devoted and committed to keep our work going, growing and thriving even in the midst of the incredibly high prices our city faces. We want to keep our sliding-scale system in place and believe in the idea of equity for those who have a little more to pay what they can and for those who have less to pay what they can. With our new much bigger center, we will be able to make space for more students to receive the life changing gifts of Yoga and become empowered to make positive change within their own lives. Expanding our offerings – classes, workshops, trainings, community classes, volunteer opportunities, apprenticeships and employment – means we can amplify and empower the voices of amazing people in our programs.
Aaaand of course our Lotusland Lounge with Tea and Lotus cookies and Lotusland Lending Library! To cozy up with a book before or after class.
We are so honored you have chosen to contribute to our cause and please share this email and fundraiser with the people in your life who can. We are So excited share all the ways we are planning to come together to celebrate this incredible news!
Save the Date for our Birthday Bash August 8th for our big announcement party and Kirtan with Astrud
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