About Us
The Tree Yoga Cooperative Story
Rita, Jonié Cole, Jana, and Jenni founded The Tree Yoga Cooperative in August of 2020 after years of teaching yoga and meditation throughout South Los Angeles. Their community leadership at The Tree South LA (a nonprofit organization, formerly Green Tree Yoga & Meditation Foundation & The Tree South LA) united them to reimagine the ways we connect, heal, build, and celebrate ourselves and our community.
Rita and Jonié, both raised in South Central, never saw yoga in their neighborhood growing up. They saw yoga in the mainstream media practiced by thin, European American (White) women and didn't see anyone who looked like them practicing yoga. It wasn’t till later in their adulthood that they found Yoga as a tool for mental health and physical wellness. Rita has played an important role over the years in creating access to yoga with our Spanish-speaking communities and mentoring other Spanish-speaking yoga practitioners.
Jana's practice and purpose became clearer for her during her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay where meditation and mindfulness helped her to navigate and embrace herself more fully as well as other people with different cultures, norms, languages, experiences, and backgrounds. These elements of inclusion, acceptance, and mindful facilitation are what she and Jonié bring to the forefront of our yoga teacher training program. Jonié and Jana have been leading our yoga teacher training program where more community members are able to deepen their own yoga practice, evolve their leadership in wellness, and become certified practitioners.
Our youngest of the team, Jenni, started her yoga journey with the intention of healing from sexual trauma. That healing journey has expanded into how we support collective healing from systemic oppression and co-conspire through our partnerships to address the health inequities among marginalized communities. Each brings full circle to the importance of sharing our stories, building healthy relationships, and creatively collaborating in this healing justice movement, so we are reminded to live in Liberation now.
Misson
Our mission is to be a hub of holistic wellness and community support. We believe that true education is the exploration and expression of the intelligence that resides inside everyone.
Our focus is to educate and empower through the transformative practice of Yoga as an accessible, effective tool that allows for living in Liberation.
Who We Are: We exist to affirm that health and well-being are born from inside and that Joy is an individual and communal reality we all can tap into.
It is important that People of Color know that this is a safe space to enjoy this practice and to teach, work, and offer their services.
We want to be part of the increase in representation of People of Color, LGBTQ, and varying body types in this global industry.
Our Values & Work
Mindfulness
Practicing self-awareness allows us to check in with ourselves and what is impacting our lives. Through mindfulness we can see our interconnectedness with those around us in our community and make decisions about how to move forward together for collective Liberation.
- Mindfulness Meditation classes available on a sliding scale.
- Guided Mindfulness presentations and sessions provided to our community partnerships.
- Mindfulness built into our 200hr Yoga Teacher Training program
Sustainability
Our services intentionally keep in mind the environmental and societal impact it has on the wellbeing of our students, customers, and workers. To sustain the accessibility of our programming, our commitment is to ensure our ethics and economic decisions are driven by worker and community benefit.
- We provide an accessible monthly on-demand subscription that supports BIPOC practitioners.
- Our sliding scale pricing allows for students to pay what they can, and compensates our BIPOC practitioners for their services.
Social Justice
Every day we get to do what we love, value each other’s beingness and work towards addressing the health inequities impacting our BIPOC communities with a systems-change approach. We provide community support to frontline justice warriors, educators, mental health providers, formerly incarcerated folks, unhoused people, people struggling with addiction, and domestic violence, foster youth, and community members. Our community partnerships allow us to provide holistic support by connecting individuals to resources available and educating each other about grassroots and policy efforts in building a life-affirming community.
Work With US
If your organization’s mission is in alignment with ours, we invite you to contact us to better understand each other’s services or justice-based work.
There are many assets in our community - people, small business, libraries, youth programs, etc., join us in elevating all the amazing efforts that exist to sustain and create more opportunities in our community!
If you would like for us to facilitate a group session to support the wellbeing of your team, please contact us to discuss more.
Community Partnerships
Donate to the Tree
We are committed to educating and empowering individuals, communities, and professionals to improve health disparities and become health equity advocates.
