Meet Our Board

I joined ICY in 2022 after meeting Tony at a mindful hiking guide training in Eagle Creek Park. I had practiced yoga and meditation on and off throughout my life, and the practice finally stuck when I began attending what was then “Midtown Midday Mindful Movement and Meditation” on Fridays at Tarkington Park. Practicing outside with my neighbors energized me, even when I had to wake up early to get there. Tony, Katy, Dustin, and I started dreaming up ICY’s Mindful Nature Walks then as a way to connect with the natural world in refreshing, interesting ways. Practicing with this group continuously shows me a deeper, more nourishing way of relating to others and being part of an intentional community.

As an organizer of the Mindful Nature Walks program, I love co-creating space to slow down and consider our place in the more than human world. When co-leading walks, I enjoy exploring nature with all senses, learning from the creative perspectives of other practice leaders, and hearing the unique reflections of everyone walking and observing alongside us. I find that our sweetest moments come from sharing a cup of cold tea on a hot day and hot tea on cold days.

I started practicing with Indy Community Yoga in the Spring of 2020. When the pandemic started, I needed to process what was happening. I discovered Indy Community Yoga by way of the Indianapolis Zen Center, and I sat with the morning meditation group on Zoom every weekday for six months. This group was a huge support to me during that bewildering time. I appreciated how, by way of discussing our experiences of meditation, we were able to be present to each other in a profound way.

I am a poet and I’ve been teaching creative writing for over twenty years. In 2020, I started leading creative writing practice after Monday morning meditation on Zoom. Each week, I offer a different creative writing prompt and we write together for ten minutes. It always surprises me how much we’re able to write in such a short time, and I love seeing the infinite directions that our writing takes. I also use creative writing techniques when I co-lead Mindful Nature Walks as a means of sharpening our senses and tuning in with our surroundings.

I have met so many creative thinkers through Indy Community Yoga, and it is a joy to work together to offer free yoga and mindfulness practices for every body. I love collaborating with this inventive and compassionate team as we think of ways to support our community.

I have been practicing yoga in some form for almost 10 years - mostly at home. The start of which was largely focused on what I could gain physically from my practice. Over the years, I looked for a group that could help me make space for the emotional aspects I felt brewing in my personal practice. I feel I found that in ICY. 

I first attended a Saturday practice back in 2020 on Zoom, but didn’t start attending practice again until the summer of 2023. Everyone’s honesty in showing up shocked me and kept me showing up every week. There is no pressure to perform an exact movement. People come late and are told not to worry about it. I’m reminded constantly there is nothing to achieve. I want all people to have access to a space where they are able to be honest and themselves, just like this. 

Being from Brown County, Indiana, I have a great love for our earth and have so much more to see of it. I try to spend as much time hiking and camping as I can, but otherwise hang out with my cat, Marsha.

I started practicing with Indy Community Yoga in the summer of 2019 after I stumbled upon an event for Saturday yoga practice at the 100 Acres. Before that, my practice was limited to sporadic sessions in yoga studios and occasional online guided meditations by myself.

I was immediately profoundly grateful to find ICY because I recognized early on that it was different from anything I had experienced before. Something I noticed right away when I arrived was that Tony came up and introduced himself to me and asked me my name, and remembered it the next time I showed up to practice! Something else I remember about that summer is that I started learning what it means to practice with a group of people who accept me for me, however I show up. There is a special feeling that comes from this kind of practice with others, where there is no expectation about how one “should be”. I noticed that I didn’t have to worry about how I expressed myself, and this is very freeing. To me this feels like community care.

As a community practice leader and board member, I enjoy co-creating spaces for others to practice and connect with each other. Leading the Queer + Trans Community Yoga practice has allowed me to facilitate movement, meditation, and mindful dialog in a safe space with others like me. Laughter during yoga practice delights me, especially when we’re outside connecting to one another in nature. I also find joy in moving slowly and quietly taking in the world around me. I share my home with my dog, Cubana, who is a perfect creature.

Imani Jones (they/them/theirs) is a neurodivergent, nonbinary, artist, community builder, friend, and lesbian. Imani's life's art is to be a living, flawed, open, and honest example of what it means to be yourself, to build community out of a relational deficit, and to thrive within a system that is made to harm you and divert hope.

I first connected with ICY in 2019 during Saturday morning practices that were happening at the Indianapolis Zen Center across the street from my house. While I had been practicing yoga and meditation for about 15 years before then, it was not in a consistent setting/group, and in the case of meditation it was mostly on my own. The sincerity of ICY practice is what first stood out to me. I appreciated that I could participate without feeling like I had to alter my natural way of moving, expressing myself, or even how I dress. I liked that ICY offers a space to have fun, explore, and connect. I have benefited tremendously from being able to share and reflect on meditation in an open and caring community.

I really enjoy that being a practice leader allows me to get to know and learn from a rich assortment of people. I enjoy having opportunities to engage with the natural world with other people in an open and honest way. I am grateful to be in a community that doesn’t avoid difficult feelings and challenges. And, I appreciate the authentic reflections, talents, and care that everyone brings to collective experiences. I am easily delighted and curious, and movement and meditation makes it easier to share that.

I was born in Michigan City, IN and grew up in a working class neighborhood parented by my Vietnamese refugee mother and my third-generation German-Polish dad. Mom worked in kitchens. Dad repaired heavy equipment for a slag company. I have several half-siblings. I got to attend Indiana University - Bloomington, where I took a whole lot of Latin on my way to undergraduate Psychology and Biology degrees and somewhat accidentally earned a Masters degree in Organic Chemistry. I spent over 15 years working in pharmaceutical manufacturing, doing my best to protect workers and the environment, and learning how corporations operate. That is all happily in the past. Nowadays, my energy goes towards building spaces of community care, mutual nourishment, and collective liberation with friends and taking care of my elderly mother, who has dementia. 

On April Fool’s Day 2017, I gathered a group of friends to practice yoga at the 100 Acres in Indianapolis. I had been leading yoga practices at my workplace since 2013 and also had been leading a brief movement practice before the meditation practices at Chùa An Lạc. I didn't set out to create an organization. I just wanted to practice with friends on the grass under big shade trees, free from paywalls, transactions, and pressure, a space with the spirit of practicing-with instead of teaching-to that is sincere and safe for every body. One practice led to another and now we have this beautiful, living organism called Indy Community Yoga, where people can just be their ordinary selves. At our heart is a commitment to safety that allows people to return to ease and to not-pretend. This no-coercion, mutually nourishing, community care spirit is in our DNA, literally. I think this is really human nature, the ordinary heart of humanity. I love my work, which is making it easier for people to be themselves and encouraging others to do the same both in our practices and in the rest of their lives.

My mother was my first teacher. We practiced Buddhist rituals at home, resting our hearts on Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and making offerings to our ancestors. I learned from her suffering and care. Her paternal grandmother was her first teacher. I first became aware of meditation around age 10, when I began attending Chùa Quang Minh in Chicago with Mom and came into contact with the monk Thích Đúc Niệm, who taught me through gifts of books, warm smiles with pats on the shoulder, and just being a kind adult in my life. The temple was about 90 minutes away from where we lived, but it was an oasis for both Mom and me. It was a center for Vietnamese culture and container for the ocean of grief of hundreds of Vietnamese far away from home and family, where we would hear the monks and nuns give talks, chant our sutras, do our prostrations, grieve, mourn, cook fantastic meatless meals together, and enjoy a bit of joy in community. I did more eating than cooking in those days, and quite a bit of sweeping. 

Yoga came later. I completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training at Peace Through Yoga in Indianapolis in 2013 after practicing there for four years. The physical practice helped me to reacquaint myself with my feelings and, together with my nascent home meditation practice, created conditions for me to be sincere with myself. Over the next two years, I received instruction and immersion on Vedanta philosophy through Hindu sacred texts at Arsha Bodha Center in New Jersey and Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Pennsylvania. My experiences there led me to reconnect with my Vietnamese Buddhist roots at Chùa An Lạc in Indianapolis, where I practiced meditation in community with other people for the first time in 2014 and continued once a week for four years. From 2018 until the COVID shutdown, I practiced at the Indianapolis Zen Center with Linc Rhodes and still practice there occasionally. I also experienced “secular” mindfulness through retreats led by Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teachers and completed a yearlong Training for Mindfulness Facilitators program at UCLA in 2019. 

I first found Indy Community Yoga when I attended the silent retreat in the summer of 2021. At that point, I’d been practicing yoga and meditation for most of my life in a variety of traditions and contexts (Iyengar and Hatha yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, MBSR), but had never encountered a Sangha as open, diverse and freewheeling, with such deep and sincere of practice.

What I enjoy about the practices I co-lead is that they build our ability to focus and be fully present in our bodies and lives. Becoming more aware and accepting of sensory experiences in our bodies can be challenging at first, especially when we’re so used to judging them, but it opens the possibility of finding deep joy in the most ordinary experiences. Thus, I see mindfulness as a tool of liberation from oppressive, internalized structures.

Other than in mindful practices, I find joy in reading, writing, collage and mail art. I also love hosting our board meetings and card making parties.

I began practicing with Indy Community Yoga in the spring of 2023 after meeting Tony and other ICY people at a dance party hosted by Ania. The setting for that fortuitous encounter is meaningful to me: it embodies the joy that infuses all ICY practices and gatherings, from silent retreats and sitting meditation to yoga and social events. That joy is a combination of patient compassion and spontaneous fun that I have rarely found in any kind of organized group. Participating in ICY practices in that spirit nourishes my mind, body, and heart.

As a hiker, bird-watcher, and wildflower-lover, I enjoy sharing my enthusiasms by co-leading mindful nature walks as part of the ICY team that Marissa organizes. I also co-organize a poetry series in Indianapolis called NIGHTJAR, and the cross-pollination between ICY and the poetry community is delightful.

I came to know about ICY in 2018 when I was searching for a community. I had recently moved back to Indianapolis from Arizona where I had a twice weekly practice at a yoga studio. When I happened upon ICY’s practice I was impressed. People were actually talking to one another. People actually took time to talk to you and know you. I met some really great souls and decided to stick around to see if the feeling of inclusion was real. To my surprise, it was. I was warmly welcomed.

My practice is a very personal spiritual practice for me. It’s not just about movement, it's the combination of stillness that connects practice to spirituality.

I am really really here because first, I want to be. I want to be a part of a community that loves people in general. That does not practice the “norm”. That is inclusive and equitable. I am here because I have chosen my family.

My role in the village is practice leader, co-chair, backwhacker, and anything else that I can apply my time and talent to. If I am given an assignment, I do it to the best of my ability to benefit the village. So if there’s dishes to wash after a retreat meal, I wash them. If I need to sweep the practice area, I sweep it. My role in the village is important as each one of us plays a part in the big picture.

I spend my time at the market. I launched a candle company in 2022 and it has been flourishing. I spend a lot of time in the community meeting people and selling candles and like products. On days that I am not at the market, I am reading, writing, at the gym and sometimes sleeping. I have to get my rest because my weeks are so jam packed.

I enjoy spending time with my partner mostly. Any moment I get to laugh with him or talk about our day, delights me. I enjoy nice quiet nights at home. I am a homebody.

Bio coming soon!

I met Tony in 2016 when my sister, who had been cutting his hair for some time, introduced us. I was fresh out of high school and looking for a place to learn to meditate. It turned out that Tony had recently begun Saturday practice at the 100 Acres Park and was charging nothing! I enjoyed how peaceful it was practicing outdoors. I would also join the group in meditating at Chùa An Lạc after yoga. In 2021 I began a year-long training with Tony and learned how to lead yoga and meditation practices. I’ve been moved over the years when people come up to me and say they feel de-stressed, or experience relief from pain or discomfort after a session. It echoes a large part of why I’ve stuck around and decided to share this with others. I feel proud and grateful to have this group in my life. I’ve met many wonderful souls along the way and cannot wait to see how ICY continues to shape and mold.

When not practicing I’m probably curled up on the couch with a concha, season 3 of SpongeBob and my 5-year-old 🙂