As part of my 11th month of service as a 2023-2024 Banyan Impact Fellow at Sristi Foundation, I proposed building a partnership with The Guild for Human Services, a US-based organization. I returned from India curious about organizations that are similar to Sristi, striving to provide holistic care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After visiting both organizations and chatting with an array of staff this year, I got an idea of what each organization prioritizes, and saw that they could learn from each other.
Sristi Foundation’s mission is to empower youth with intellectual disabilities to become independent, and lead meaningful lives in mainstream society. Founded in 2013 on a small plot of farmland in rural India, Sristi focuses on low-cost interventions that are eco-friendly and done in community. The Guild’s mission is to similarly educate, encourage and empower individuals with intellectual disabilities to lead high-quality lives in the community. Founded in 1935 to serve youth with visual impairment in the Boston area, The Guild now strives to provide a continuum of community services that focus on advanced technology and personalized educational curriculums.
Given the two organizations’ parallel mission statements, unique strengths, and complementary needs, both would benefit from a partnership.
One of the most memorable parts of my time at Sristi was doing daily yoga with the men at Sristi. While the twice-daily dosage definitely played a role, I saw that even a single session of yoga had benefits. Physical activity makes all of us healthier and happier. However, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) consistently report lower levels of physical activity and higher sedentary time than the general population (Bodde et al., 2021). In one study, about 40% of typically developing students met the recommended 60 minutes of daily vigorous activity, compared to none of the youth with IDDs (Whitt-Glover et al., 2014). While mobility or functional limitations explain some of this gap, tools like yoga and dance are adaptable and accessible ways to get everyone moving as I saw at Sristi.
In fact, when yoga is made accessible to people with IDDs, participation tends to be high. Studies on adaptive yoga and physical activity interventions for individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities report high recruitment and retention (Lee et al., 2021; Bishop-Gilyard et al., 2023; Hassan et al., 2022). Promising innovations like augmented reality-guided exercise and fandom-themed yoga (e.g., YogaQuest) offer new entry points (Mastin, 2024; Keshav et al., 2025).
Inspired to stretch across continents, I hosted a series of four Sristi-inspired yoga sessions for small groups of ~15 Guild students. We did yoga, dancing, and finally ended with meditation. A Sristi staple, we ended by having everyone think of one thing they were grateful to close out. Even for students who did not participate fully, this served as exposure to these tools.
Research has consistently shown that physical activity improves quality of life and subjective well-being in individuals with disabilities (Einarsson et al., 2025). Despite yoga’s origins in South Asia and Africa, mainstream Western portrayals often center thin, wealthy, able-bodied white women doing yoga. As a result, yoga is underutilized among men, racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities in the United States (Saper et al., 2004; Quilty et al., 2024; Malden et al., 2023; Woodyard, 2011). At Sristi, it was expected that even the strongest farmhands would sit down and meditate. In the US, most kids and especially young men are not excited by yoga so I included posters full of famous celebrities, athletes, and even cartoons doing yoga.
Some other adaptations I focused on were doing one-on-one introductions at eye-level with each student, using everyone’s name, ensuring I could see the entire room, and emphasizing that yoga looks different on every body. I don’t force anyone to participate. We do yoga in everyday clothes and use accessible language like “have your back try to touch the ceiling” instead of “arch your spine.” I use intuitive names (e.g., tabletop, cow, cobra) and incorporate movement games and story-based cues like being fruit ninjas or “touching the sky” when we sit up straight. I tried to bottle up some of the joy I could recall feeling during yoga sessions at Sristi and unleash it within The Guild.
We danced to ‘Boots on the Ground’ a fun tune that one of my medical school classmates recently choreographed for another similar activity at a community health clinic.
Finally, we ended with 5 minutes of mindfulness. I minimized silent time to no more than 1-2 minutes and provide cues at all other times so students are focusing on different body parts or their breath. I use techniques like box breathing, which have been shown to improve emotional regulation because it is satisfying (and good for our nervous systems!) to hear our breath move in unison with others (Singh et al., 2016; Koenig et al., 2019). Mindfulness is often portrayed as a solitary quest, but I find that it also helps foster calm, collective regulation — particularly with a rowdy group of Sristi boys or a particularly energetic Guild classroom (Emerson et al., 2022; Spek et al., 2013).
Yoga has well-documented physical and mental health benefits, including improved flexibility, balance, strength. Dance contributes to these benefits, also incorporating music, coordination, and community. Likewise, mindfulness can help improve attention and decrease stress and irritability. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that yoga improves social responsiveness and reduces hyperactivity and stereotypical behaviors in youth with autism and related IDDs (AAP, 2021). Community programs like the Mandela Yoga Project at a hospital I’ve been rotating at as a medical student have also shown specific cardiovascular benefits of yoga for Black populations, underscoring the wide-ranging relevance of yoga.
Since group homes, like other welfare organizations, are often nonprofits that are stretched thin with staff and time, there is little collaboration with other like-minded organizations, even across states and especially across countries. Luckily, new organizations like the ANCOR Global Council are pushing the US to learn about IDD service delivery systems outside of the 50 states. Looking forward, I hope more collaborations like this can continue. Though they are separated by hundreds of miles, both organizations have the potential to learn so much from each other! I can’t wait to take some of the Guild’s lessons back to Sristi soon.
I’m continuing to work on efforts to create accessible yoga programs in medical school. If you are reading from Massachusetts or Ohio: A team of researchers at Harvard are building a yoga-based therapy program for teens age 12-18, especially men and those who identify as Black or Asian. If you meet this criteria, you or your child can be paid $50 to spend ~1 hour chatting about how we can use yoga and group therapy to help teens manage stress and sad mood. We will then use your feedback to develop yoga programs that are attractive and available to all teens. You will be invited back to the free yoga class you helped design! Link to learn more and sign up: tinyurl.com/yoga324.
References:
[1] Bodde, A. E., et al. 2021. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33861676/
[2] Whitt-Glover, M. C., et al. 2014. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24983335/
[3] Lee, R., et al. 2021. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100670/
[4] Bishop-Gilyard, C. T., et al. 2023. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37917463/
[5] Hassan, A. M., et al. 2022. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35939186/
[6] Mastin, J. 2024. Available from: https://justinemastin.com/about-yogaquest/
[7] Keshav, N., et al. 2025. Available from: https://ebooks.iospress.nl/doi/10.3233/SHTI250600
[8] Einarsson, I. Ö., et al. 2025. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029225001153?via%3Dihub
[9] Saper, R. B., et al. 2004. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18651193/
[10] Quilty, L. C., et al. 2024. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26497261/
[11] Malden, D. E., et al. 2023. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39147377/
[12] Woodyard, C. 2011. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25627668/
[13] Singh, N. N., et al. 2016. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27933677/
[14] Koenig, K. P., et al. 2019. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31725422/
[15] Emerson, L. M., et al. 2022. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35771338/
[16] Spek, A. A., et al. 2013. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24020487/
[17] AAP. 2021. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34851421/
[18] Mandela Yoga Project. 2024. Available from: https://www.mandelayogaproject.org/
[19] Jaggu, A., et al. 2023. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40419562/
