Giving Back to those who serve
Our Mission
Our mission is to equip veterans, service members, and first responders with the tools and training for managing stress, increasing resilience and to promote post-traumatic growth. Through yoga, we build community, reignite bonds and provide a space where Warriors can heal from invisible wounds shoulder to shoulder.
Our Vision
Warrior Within Yoga Project, Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit dedicated to empowering those who have served and currently serve with a practical set of skills and resources that improve quality of life and help to conquer the war within. We are committed to ensuring that evidence-based, mind-body practices like yoga are made accessible to all veterans, service members, first responders and their families.
The War Within
Sometimes the hardest battles we face are the ones we experience in our hearts and minds. While military and military-like training prepares soldiers and first responders in many ways, the same set of skills that make our Warriors succeed on the physical battle ground, are not well suited for the war within.
Yoga and mediation can provide the Warrior “within” us with the valuable tools that foster the equanimity and inner resilience we need to bring back a sense of peace and ease in our lives.
Our army of yoga instructors are the boots on the ground to deliver relevant and evidence-based yoga to those that serve our country and communities.
“Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, illuminating the way for the whole nation. If veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war”.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk & peace activist
Our Story
Warrior Within Yoga Project expands upon the volunteer work that founder, Lauren Turner, began in memory of US Army Veteran Larry MacKeil, who passed away from cancer in 2019. In his last week of life, Larry was provided hospice care from his local Veterans’ homeless shelter. “His brother in arms showed him unconditional compassion and helped him pass with dignity. It was was clear that the dedication to serving their country and community does not end when a Veteran retires. Bringing yoga to those who serve was a way for me to give back”, said Lauren, Larry’s niece.
Inspired by the generosity and selfless-service the Veteran community provided her uncle and her family, Lauren dedicated herself to learning how she could share the benefits of yoga with these amazing people. In the summer of 2022 Lauren was accepted into a Business Accelerator with an organization call EforAll to transform the work she was doing as a volunteer into an organized effort to reach Veterans, service members and first responders.
Formally incorporated in September 2022, WWYP is making plans to hire, train and deploy yoga instructors into new communities throughout Massachusetts.
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples”.
-Mother Theresa