Meet Yoga4Good
Yoga4Good is a local yoga mat company on a mission to do good in the world!
Yoga4Good Owner and Founder Tori Morrison shares her company’s mission, to raise awareness about sexual assault, and how her yoga mats are helping spread the word.
Trigger warning: this article mentions sexual assault. If at any point, you’d like support and want to talk to someone, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
The Yoga4Good Story: How We Came to Be
Yoga4Good was born out of San Diego native Tori Morrison’s love and a desire to help promote sexual assault awareness. And we don those teal colors (the official color of SAAM or sexual assault awareness month), proudly both symbolically and literally (we have a teal/turquoise yoga mat). Yoga4Good also has a yoga mat spray, specially formulated for their eco-friendly mats.
Tori came up with the idea for Yoga4Good after coming to terms with a very ugly truth: her best guy friend had sexually assaulted her. Healing after this experience proved harder than she had ever imagined. To best explain it, we will go with a Cheryl Strayed quote “The place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmery light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it.” And so, “do it” she did.
Now, if you’re wondering why we went with a Cheryl Strayed quote, here’s our reasoning. Tori has always loved the book Wild for the way it honors, addresses, and acknowledges the process of healing. She has a wild tattoo in honor of that book and the book Women Who Run with the Wolves for she believes women should feel both safe and wild throughout their lifetime – always. And a big part of that includes feeling safe enough in their bodies not to have to worry about the potential of someone assaulting them and wild enough to be authentically themselves.
People always think her tattoo says “Will,” which she loves because it gives her an opportunity to explain that it reads “Wild”. The observer almost always asks why and then she’s given the opportunity to share these two books and their messages.
Why We Give Back to Center for Community Solutions (CCS)
As a former yoga teacher, Tori wanted a way to bridge together her passion to raise awareness about sexual assault through yoga. She thought of yoga mats one day and over the course of a year created her hemp yoga mat company, which donates a portion of its profits to an organization in San Diego, CA called Center for Community Solutions (CCS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending relationship and sexual violence.
How Yoga4Good Gives Back to the San Diego Community
According to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, an American is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds!
One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult. 82% of all victims under 18 are female. Females ages 16 to 19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.
Clearly, we need to spread awareness about this issue, take action, and also help these individuals find healing and restore agency in their bodies. So, how does Yoga4Good help? We donate to organizations that are not just raising awareness about this issue but also providing resources, support, shelter, and healing methods. This is why Yoga4Good donates a portion of our profits to Center for Community Solutions in San Diego, CA. CCS provides the following resources to anyone who has experienced sexual violence or assault (and we love them for it!):
Legal services
Shelter
Counseling
24/7 crisis hotline
Victim advocacy
Prevention education
CCS is hosting their big fundraiser Tea & Tonic on Friday, June 2, 2023, in San Diego, CA if you’d like to donate to them or get involved.
Tori is also currently in the process of becoming a Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) Instructor. TCTSY is an evidence-based program for survivors of complex trauma that helps restore connection to the body in a safe, deliberate way. TCTSY has foundations in trauma theory, attachment theory, neuroscience, and hatha yoga, with an emphasis on body-based yoga forms and breathing practices.
While she’s not a TCTSY yoga instructor just yet (You can also find a list of TCTSY instructors in California online if you’d like to connect with one), Tori does offer private, restorative yoga sessions in San Diego to help whoever reconnect with their bodies, slow down, feel, move through emotion, and find self-care, self-love, and ultimately, inner peace. She has found that healing herself has a deep correlation to healing others and is very passionate about helping women heal through the practice of yoga.
Upcoming Events
Yoga4Good has partnered with Coming Out Happy, a wellness community that helps queer adults create the relationships they’re most passionate about from the inside out, for a
Queer Self-Love Retreat, which is set to take place in San Diego from June 9 – 11.
To learn more about Yoga4Good, check out more upcoming events, or book a private yoga session, be sure to head on over to www.yoga4good.com to connect.
About Tori
Tori Morrison is a local San Diego native, restorative yoga lover, coffee fanatic, business owner, and avid traveler. She actually owns two businesses in San Diego, CA! She’s also the CEO of TM SEO Services, where she helps health and wellness and fitness companies scale through SEO efforts, like doing all their blog writing! You can find her either reading fiction at a local café, doing yoga with friends, or putting on an event with a mission-driven business in the community.
