YOGA + FITNESS / Seva
Justin Blazejewski
VETOGA
Yoga in Service of Veterans by Toni Viney
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ometimes, we find yoga, and other times yoga finds us, carrying with it the potential for many self-discoveries. Either way, it is often a practice of self-discovery that goes beyond our initial expectations. When yoga found Justin Blazejewski, Marine Corps veteran and founder of VETOGA, he had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over 40 times during his five years of service in the Marine Corps and 10 years of service as a government contractor. “I was starting to bring the burdens of war home with me,”
Blazejewski reflects. “I was very depressed, angry and suicidal.” One day, after returning from a warzone, Blazejewski’s roommate was concerned about his mental health and told Blazejewski that he would be going to yoga with her that evening. During Blazejewski’s first yoga class, he remembers trying to keep up and being surprised by the challenge of the practice. During savasana, Blazejewski had a realization. “I was lying in a puddle of sweat in corpse pose and felt something I hadn’t felt in almost 10 years before I went into the Marine Corps,” he shares. “I felt my parasympathetic nervous system engage. It was like medicine to me, and I felt the positive effects on my body and mind immediately. It was in that moment that I knew yoga was going to be part of my journey.” Blazejewski infused yoga into his daily life and trained to become a teacher. He now holds space for others like him to experience the healing power of yoga after founding VETOGA in 2015. VETOGA is a nonprofit and registered yoga school with Yoga Alliance, which provides yoga, meditation and healing arts to veterans, law enforcement and first responders. Blazejewski’s impact is far reaching. He has since trained 150 yoga teachers through the organization’s teacher training program, which launched in 2021. 100% of all their funds go into the program to support teacher trainings and outreach efforts without anyone drawing a salary. Using this model, every dollar matters. Through the generosity of donors, all veterans can participate in VETOGA’s teacher training program for free. Once training is complete, they are asked to teach one free, monthly yoga class to their communities. Currently, there are
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Photos by Bernadetten Kilcer
Marine Corps veteran and founder of VETOGA
