Living Positively + Living Well Campaign

LIVING POSITIVELY + LIVING WELL

A movement to use love and happiness against HIV.

Begin your own advocacy to live with a positive outlook, and share that positivism to the world. Add your voice to the growing number of advocates rallying for positivism and against HIV.

To be a part of the Living Positively + Living Well Open Photoshoot:

1. Share your stories, thoughts, or philosophies on how you live positively;
2. Join our two-part open photoshoot; and
3. Be featured in our photo exhibition.

When: October 22 and 29 (10AM-6PM)

Where: Pioneer Studios, 123 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City

For the location map and directions to the venue, visit www.pioneerstudios.ph. The parking space in front of Pioneer Studios is limited and a tow-away zone.  Pay parking is available at Pioneer Citiland Parking near the studio at the corner of Pioneer Street and Reliance Street (see location map).  Rates are PhP30.00 for first 3 hours and PhP10.00 succeeding hours.

Registration Fee: PhP1,000.00

Proceeds to the event will be used for further skills training of YFL members as we expand our program to reach more people affected by HIV.

Specially-trained peer counselors from The Love Yourself Project (TLYP) will offer free counseling during the event.

How to Participate:

1. Pre-register to confirm your participation (see registration form below)
   1. Answer the question “How do you live positively?”
   2. Select a schedule for your photoshoot. Make sure to indicate the following details:
      1. Shirt size;
      2. Preferred date; and
      3. Preferred time.
2. Come to the scheduled photoshoot date and time
   1. Get professionally-shot portraits by photographer Noel Abelardo; and
   2. A special Yoga for Life “Living Positively + Living Well” t-shirt.
3. Watch out for the Photo Exhibition in December 2011

FAQs

What should I wear?

You will be provided a Yoga for Life t-shirt to wear during the photoshoot. Please wear bottoms that will allow you to comfortably sit in a cross-legged position on the floor, e.g. pants.

Will the basic grooming or make-up service include hair styling?

We will have make-up artists on site to do basic touch-ups and grooming. We prefer the participants to look naturally beautiful; there is no need to look extremely glamorous.

Why do I have to pre-register and pay a 50% downpayment?

We don’t want you to wait long to have your photo taken. So by pre-registering and making a downpayment, we can reserve a timeslot that is most convenient for you.  We will also be able to reserve a t-shirt that best fits your size.  This process will allow us to work more efficiently and give you the attention and service you deserve.  You can pay the 50% balance at the venue.  We can issue official receipts upon request.

Can I still go if I did not pre-register or pay the 50% downpayment?

Yes, but you may have to wait for the next available timeslot.  Pre-registered individuals will be given priority.  Best to give us a call before you come so we can advice you.  Call Charmaine at 09175404247.  You can pay the P1,000 donation at the venue.

Can I bring a friend who wants to go for the same photoshoot but had not pre-registered on the website?

Yes, but same rule applies as in the previous question.

How long will the photoshoot take?

Allot 1.5 to 2 hours for the whole process, which will include registration, 10-minute peer education, make-up/grooming, and actual photoshoot.

Is the HIV peer education required?

The 10-minute HIV peer education session is optional, but highly recommended.  You will be in the good hands of certified peer educators from The Love Yourself Project, our partner for the campaign.  It will be a productive way to fill in the waiting time.

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS

By filling out the registration form, I am committing to participate in this photoshoot in support of Yoga for Life’s Living Positively + Living Well Campaign.  I understand that the donation of P1,000.00 will be collected from every participant to pay for a package that includes: (1) a Yoga for Life t-shirt, (2) basic grooming or make-up services, (3) a free HIV peer education session, and (4) two post-processed digital photos - 1 headshot layout and 1 lotus yoga pose layout.

Please make a 50% downpayment or full payment to reserve a timeslot.  Fill in and submit  the registration form on or before 21 October 2011. We will contact you through email or mobile phone to confirm your reserved timeslot.

Payment Instructions

You have three options for paying:

1. Make a 50% downpayment of PhP500.00 by depositing it to our bank account and pay the 50% balance during the actual photoshoot;
2. Make a full payment of PhP1,000.00 by depositing it to our bank account; or
3. Paying either amount directly to Charmaine Cu-Unjieng or Paulo Leonido (co-founders) during a regular yoga class on or before 19 October 2011.  Official receipts will be given. Please settle any balance during the actual photoshoot. Schedule of classes can be found at www.yogaforlife.ph. 

For bank deposits, our bank details are as follows:

Bank name: China Banking Corp. (Chinabank Greenhills Branch)

Account name: Yoga for Life Foundation, Inc.

Account number: 105-375041-6

* Please show your bank deposit slip or Yoga for Life official receipt when you register during the actual photoshoot.

Yoga for Life: TOUCHING LIVES

On Sunday, 15 May 2011, the Yoga for Life community will come together to join the world in commemorating the 28th International AIDS Candlelight Memorial at the Glorietta 3 Park in Ayala Center, Makati. Entitled Yoga for Life: Touching Lives, it will be an afternoon that will gather yoga enthusiasts and HIV advocates alike in a candlelit sunset ceremony honoring the lives of people affected by HIV and AIDS.

The Yoga for Life community will take the traditional candle lighting ceremony further by making an impact in the way that it knows best - through yoga. Co-founders Charmaine Cu-Unjieng and Paulo Leonido will be joined by the country’s top yoga instructors in leading the community through yoga poses, breathing techniques and guided meditation, to demonstrate how the discipline and community of yoga help those affected by HIV. More importantly, the event aims to unite the community’s energies towards igniting the flames of HIV awareness in the general public.

The event will begin with registration at 3:30 pm, and will be supported by yoga instructors Roland dela Cruz, Jeannie Javelosa, Tesa Celdran, Marilen Elizalde, Marc Carlos, Lex Bonife and Rebecca de Villa, HIV advocates from different sectors and friends of the Yoga for Life community. Proceeds from the event will support the services that Yoga for Life provides to the HIV community, which include yoga classes, meditation sessions, and HIV and life-skills counseling.

This is the 28th year since the International Candlelight Memorial was first held, making it the longest running community event around HIV and AIDS. It will also be the first time that the Yoga for Life community is joining the tens of thousands of people from 75 different countries in touching the lives of those affected by HIV. While the Candlelight Memorial was originally held to commemorate the lives lost to HIV, Yoga for Life chooses to empower the lives of those who continue to triumph in spite of the virus, and celebrate the HIV advocate in everyone.

Yoga for Life began in June 2010, and is the Philippines’ first community-based yoga program for persons living with HIV, as well as others who support them and the cause and want to experience the beauty of yoga. To date, the community has grown to over 300, as Yoga for Life continues to reach more people and build a community of advocates who, through yoga, share their energies towards living positively and living well.

So come and join us as we touch lives through yoga!

YOGA FOR LIFE

Yoga for Life is the first ever community-based yoga class series, specially designed for the needs of people living with HIV, but open as well to others who support them and want to experience the beauty of yoga.

For inquiries, you may contact: Charmaine: 0917 540-4247 | charmaine.cuunjieng@gmail.com Paulo: 0917 388-9658 | comradepaw@gmail.com yogaforlife.ph@gmail.com

Photos taken by Noel Abelardo
http://noelabelardo.multiply.com/photos/album/61/Yoga_For_Life

YFL on The Philippine Star

Yoga for life, and living for yoga

Source: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=645944&publicationSubCategoryId=451
Article by: BENT ANTENNA By Audrey N. Carpio (The Philippine Star) Updated January 07, 2011

On the first day back from the holidays, my yoga class was expectedly full with new people and their steely resolve to get on the fitness track. As we stretched out our creaky bones, saturated with Christmas fat, and sweated out the hangovers, I once again thought about what it was about yoga that has made me keep coming back to it throughout the years. I was always a nerd, unathletic and gawky, and in high school I would skip PE classes by managing to always have my period. The competitiveness of team sports didn’t appeal to me, and running like a hamster in the gym was boring and tedious. Discovering yoga was somewhat of a breakthrough in my physical routine, mainly because it wasn’t all about the physical. There was a mind-body connection that appealed to my intellectual and spiritual side while also creating a stronger, more toned body. After the last minutes of savasana I would always feel centered and peaceful, free of toxins both physical and emotional. So I wasn’t surprised when I came across yoga for people living with HIV. As a practice with proven physiological and psychological benefits for almost any type of body, it makes perfect sense.

Yoga For Life, a community-based yoga series created by Charmaine Cu-Unjieng, a Yale-educated HIV specialist, and Paulo Leonido, a fitness expert and personal trainer, came together when the two met during yoga teacher training under Roland dela Cruz of Bliss Yoga. Call it dharma. “We were together six days a week for two months. We’re both passionate about HIV. We even have the same birthday,” Charmaine says. “I always wanted to merge the work I had been doing with yoga, and meeting Paolo catalyzed it.”

With her contacts at Echo Yoga, a group that offers alternative classes to niche groups like overweight and older people, and his contacts at Philippine General Hospital and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, Charmaine and Paulo developed an Iyengar-based yoga program designed for the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS. Worldwide, yoga is being recognized as an important complementary therapy for immunosuppressed patients. “I have friends living with HIV. I had always wondered, what happens next?” Paulo says. “So we came up with Yoga for Life, which is a non-strenuous, holistic approach to wellness.”

The first couple of months of classes were not so easy, as newcomers had many fears to overcome and needed to grow more comfortable about opening up and talking about HIV. “We didn’t know at first whether to focus on people with HIV, or make it an advocacy against stigma and discrimination, open to everyone. We were also concerned about confidentiality,” says Charmaine. But it has become a safe space: there is no requirement to disclose one’s status, and the classes are indeed open to people with HIV and those who support people with HIV. Ninety percent of the students are gay men, and half of them are estimated to be HIV positive.

In Ayurvedic philosophy, specific poses like inversions are beneficial to the immune system, while backbends stimulate thymus activity and forward bends detoxify the liver. B.K.S. Iyengar, the founder of Iyengar Yoga, outlined a sequence of poses that encourage proper blood circulation and activate glands that are known to regulate the production of T-cells, the body’s army against infections. For people living with HIV, yoga alleviates stress and depression. For those on ARV drugs, yoga helps detoxify their system. After an hour and 15 minutes of asana practice, the students are guided through meditation and breathing techniques, and it is in these moments that yoga becomes its most medicinal. “Our approach is to bring back the inner peace, self love, self empowerment and happiness. You don’t have to be reminded about your sickness,” Charmaine explains.

Feedback and results from students have been encouraging. One student, with a dangerously low CD4 count of 7 (HIV-negative people normally would have 700-1,000 T-cells) was getting sick with opportunistic infections. The doctor advised him to stop exercising. Charmaine and Paulo put him in relaxing poses. He stopped getting fever every day, and started gaining weight and getting stronger. His new CD4 count is unknown, but one can surmise that his stabilized health reflects a higher number of T-cells. Paulo shares that other students are starting to practice on their own, even employing breathing techniques inside taxis when they need to calm down.

With Paulo as a great motivator for the students, keeping in touch with inspirational texts, Yoga for Life has become more than just a place for a judgment-free work out. “Yoga for Life has proven itself to be a real community,” blogged one practitioner who had been living with HIV for three years. “Being with the Yoga for Life community turned out to be the best way to celebrate World AIDS Day. Yes, I dare to use the word ‘celebrate.’ Because gone are the days of World AIDS Day being a commemoration of the lives that had been lost to AIDS. Rather, we should be celebrating. Celebrating life going on in spite of the virus.”

For the new year, Paulo and Charmaine are hoping to scale up their program, introduce fun safer-sex campaigns to spread the message of positive prevention, and find more yoga teachers. As they run it on a volunteer basis and only ask for a suggested donation of P200 per class, the sustainability of Yoga for Life still looms as an issue. But with the energy they give out in service to others, the universe is sure to respond in manifold.

* * *

Yoga for Life is held on Wednesdays, 7 p.m. at 28th Floor Conference Room, Medical Plaza Ortigas Building, San Miguel Avenue, Ortigas, Pasig City, and on Saturdays, 2 p.m. at Echo Yoga Community Center, 9th Floor Penthouse, Century Plaza Building, Perea Street, Legazpi Village, Makati.

***

YFL invites you to share our Yoga for Life practice in any way, e.g. join a class, teach a class (for yoga teachers), donate (cash, yoga mat or other yoga props), host a class, re-post this article, or other creative ways you would like to contribute. Happy 2011! Namaste =)

For inquiries, you may contact:
Charmaine: 0917 540-4247 | charmaine.cuunjieng@gmail.com

Paulo: 0917 388-9658 | comradepaw@gmail.com

World Aids Day Celebration

Its my first time to celebrate World Aids Day as a Pozzie. I joined yoga for life's WAD and  together with their 6th monthsary celebration. We had a special kirtan session, there were lighted candles formed in a ribbon, where we were in circle around it sitting in our yoga mats. This year's theme was "Light for Rights" HIV rights is HUMAN RIGHTS, we have the same rights as people who are not living with HIV. We pozzie's are just like any other human being, we are still normal, we can do all the things that a normal being can, the difference is we just have to take care of ourselves more.

We begun the celebration by the alternate nostril breathing followed by 9 sun salutation, and then we sang different songs and at the end of every song someone can share anything she/he likes. Someone spoke up disclosing his status, i was a bit teary eyed, I was saying to myself what a brave guy, then another person also shared his, i was just listening and trying to absorb what they was saying, there are about 6 person who share their story before I had the guts to speak up. So I told my story... First I told them how I was negative in December 2009 and came up positive in February 2010, due to memory problems I asked my ex bf to support me with my story telling, I really don't want to cry but I can't help it, I was really in pain because my mom couldn't accept me, she called me a "sex pervert" and she thinks my life is a BIG MESS, she always tells me to fix my life and not to enter another relationship because of my condition. I was in tears while sharing my story in front of people I don't even know (parang tanga lang!) , then someone spoke up about privacy, that disclosing someone else status is against the law, that the stories shared on that room will remain on that room. I remembered the pozzie who disclosed my status and shared it to them, I hoped they will be very careful to whom they share their secrets with. I think 9 or 10 people shared their story, I am very lucky to have witnessed an event like this. 

Overall I was very happy, I was happy I was brave enough to spoke up, I was happy that the people in the room accepted me, I was very very happy... some people gave me a hug after the session, I felt very much loved. We finished the celebration with a vegetarian dinner, not really a fan of veggies, but I know I have to eat because its good for me, honestly the food didn't really taste like vegetables the food was really good.

For me yoga for life wasn't just a community or a place to do yoga, I felt like I belong to a "family" like what I always said to my fellow pozzie's "family tayo kc magka-dugo naman tayo", yoga for life is a place where you can be free of judgement, just pure acceptance no matter what age, gender or HIV status you have.  Everyone is welcome in YFL. Thank you YFL! Thank you charmaine, paulo, the core group and to everyone at YFL! One big Hug! More power!

BTW! congrats to charmaine and his husband... cheers to the adorable couple!

To all the pozzie's out there, it's not the end of life, don't give up, always remember that your heart is still beating.

And one last thing... someone kissed me that night, nothing intimate just a smack on the lips. Want to know who? nah.. secret! :P

21 NO MORE!

I am now officially 22, and I have HIV!

Nothing special, the whole family is busy with campaigning so prior to that I planned to attend Yoga for Life at makati with my BF and BFF, it's our first time to attend YFL at makati, the place was different, the crowd was different although i see familiar faces who also attend the Wednesday group. Since it's my birthday I was the center of attention, the yogi's are very vocal about it. I was shy, I really don't like to be the center of attention, I was blushing, then the practice begun, they have this thing where you will do numbers of "sun salutations" corresponding to the celebrants age, it was very nice although it was very tiring, I can see others getting tired already, i felt a bit guilty but as a treat I baked brownies for them to eat afterward. Overall I was happy! Even though others are complete strangers and some who I already knew, they made my day special, especially Mr. Yogi who is always gives me a warm hug, lucky.trese was also there, finally after exchanging text messages and chatting on ym I finally got the chance to met him (sorry I was shy, never got the chance to really bond with you). Yoga was awsome!

After yoga, myself, bf, and bff went to MOM&TINA'S to have our early dinner, the food was great, we got the chance to bond again, the three of us are really close. While eating, BF received a text message from a friend asking if he had tested for HIV, because his friend told him that him that his partner(me) is POZ, I know this person has no bad intentions, he was just concerned with his friend(my bf) so I didn't really mind that because it's my birthday and I don't want to ruin it. The next day I asked some people who knew my status, if they told anybody about it...

To be continued...

Breathing and Stretching

I've never been so relaxed since I was diagnosed of HIV. Last week I got a message on my FB asking me to join YOGA FOR LIFE, since I was busy I wasn't able to join that week. Today I decided to give it a try, I brought along my BF and my BFF. We arrived at the building at 6:58 as we are waiting for the elevator a friend whom I met at PGH came, he was a regular so didn't we didn't had problem locating the place. I was nervous at first, I'm not really the sociable type, I'm too shy to start conversations, going to a room with people I don't know was scary, good thing I have my BF and BFF with me. We were just standing there when the yoga instructor welcomed us with a handshake, he was very warm, after introducing ourselves he ask us to get some mats and find our place. We just sat there as they explaining the concept of YOGA FOR LIFE, I'm happy that there is a community who helps POZZIES like me. It's the advance monthsary celebration they've been doing YFL for 4months now. We had a small game before we start to do our thing, it was fun, the game is a relay but not in a children party way, we used condoms for the activity its called "LICK" condoms with real flavors, it taste good! The game goes like this, we form a group of two, the first person blows the condom like a balloon then on the end you popped the balloon, you get another condom and put it in the banana fastest group wins and our group won, our price? the banana! They gave away free condoms too. My BF got a lot. hahaha! 

And so the activity starts, first with the proper breathing exercise, followed by some poses and then comes the stretching, I admit I'm not very flexible, I can't even reach my ankles so I really need a lot of help from the yogi's, as the activity goes on I realized that I've been sweating A LOT!!! I had to removed my eyeglasses to be more focused. It felt nice, very nice! I can feel the stress being breathe out of my body, I can feel that I'm getting more and more relaxed, I felt every pain as I stretched my worries away. Every drop of sweat from my body was worth it. Every air I inhaled to my body symbolizes a new hope. At the end of the session I received a HUG from Mr. yogi, I wonder does he know about my status? I'm happy I joined yoga for life. I really need this, I felt like a new person, a happier version of me. I am looking forward to doing more yoga.  We really had fun!

I DECLARE THAT WEDNESDAY IS YOGA DAY! :)

namaste!