“I didn’t take up yoga until the end of my senior year at Spelman College,” says Chelsea, the daughter of Trotwood residents Valerie and Frank Jackson.
“I started when I felt out of shape and didn’t like it at first, but gave it another try in 2004, when I wanted to deal with stress and got beyond the physical into meditation.”
While teaching third grade in Atlanta schools, she observed that students, who didn’t have recess, “were really stressed out with standardized tests.”
When she introduced elements of yoga into her classes, “The kids loved it, and I saw a change in them and the way they treated each other. They were a lot less restless.”
Chelsea took classes through the Yoga Alliance to become certified as a yoga instructor, and as a children’s yoga teacher. In 2013, as a case study for her doctorate’s dissertation at Emory University, she and her husband, Shane, started a yoga, literature and art camp at Spelman. “It was just supposed to be that summer, but people called the following year, wanting us to do it again.
“We received support from Spelman, applied for a 501C grant and started the camp up as a non-profit in 2014.”
Shane, formerly a fitness trainer, also teaches yoga, and they joined their professional lives to start Red Clay Yoga, Inc. In addition to the camps, Chelsea is a “touring professor,” giving presentations and classes to pre-service teachers at numerous colleges and universities, showing them how to integrate yoga practices in the classroom. And, she contributes writings on the subject to various publications.
“Huffington Post did an article on the camp and my ideas, I was on the cover of Yoga Journal — the largest, oldest international publication about yoga — and my ideas were creating interest.”
A high point in her efforts came this year when she was a participant in the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White house.
“I received a personal invitation from the White House, (because first lady Michelle Obama) was committed to having yoga as part of her effort to include athletics in the egg roll.
“I taught yoga, integrating it with a motivational presentation. There were adults and children in an open field for anyone who wanted to participate, and hundreds of people joined.”
She didn’t get to meet the first lady, but “Michelle jogged by me while warming up for her jog around the White House; for the past eight years, she’s put up athletic stations at the egg roll as part of her Let’s Move campaign.”
Although she no longer lives in the Dayton area, Chelsea says “I carry and represent Dayton everywhere I go.” And, she returns to Trotwood each summer to teach yoga at an art camp held by her home church, St. Margaret’s.
If her goal succeeds, then Trotwood, Dayton and other cities will integrate yoga into school curriculums. “Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz about a school in Baltimore that’s replaced detention with yoga. The results have been amazing, and I’m thrilled that I’ve contributed to this field.”
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