January 2022 Ambassador Spotlight: Sher Amos-Grosser

Every month we feature an Accessible Yoga Ambassador who is doing incredible work in their community. Are you a current Ambassador who'd like to be featured? Nominate yourself!

Sher Amos-Grosser (she/her), our Ambassador Spotlight for January 2022,  identifies as a dark-skinned, hearing impaired, college educated, American raised, of Spanish-Filipino descent, cisgender, spiritual woman, and she lives on ancestral Ohlone land, known today as Hillsborough, California.

Sher believes that we have the potential to support people regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background, experience, and ability. Sher has been in education and service roles since 1991, working at several nonprofits supporting local youth. Sher also taught in the most challenged public schools in downtown Los Angeles, East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park. Today, she teaches chair yoga through a nonprofit she founded named Edu-Wellness. Edu-Wellness supports public school teachers in the most challenged, low-performing schools in the San Francisco Bay Area by providing educators healthy meals, meditation, and chair yoga for free once a week, every week during the school year.

In addition to bachelor's and master's degrees, Sher (RYT-500) is trained in mindful meditation and was part of the Accessible Yoga cohort in May 2021. Upon completion of the Accessible Yoga Training, she felt like she "found her people" and quickly became an Accessible Yoga Ambassador.

Sher turned to meditation in 1990 while in college and yoga in 1995 when she was pregnant with her first daughter. She and Adam, her partner, raised two daughters, Gabrielle and Jordan Maya, and are companions to two labradoodles, Moose and Marlo.

We asked Sher...

What does Accessible Yoga mean to you?

"Accessible Yoga builds on diverse voices, empowerment, acceptance, respect, and equity. And if I can use language we are all familiar with, Accessible Yoga is the self's embracing and modeling of ahimsa." 

How did you get started with Accessible Yoga?

"What I didn't realize was that the style of yoga I was sharing with students (aka, the public school teachers) was accessible. After taking Jivana's course in May 2021, I joyfully realized that my approach to teaching was more accessible than I had anticipated. My lessons were not unusual to the way other teachers taught their yoga class: I checked in and offered a chance for those in the room to talk, we meditated together in positions that were most easeful, I offered options not 'modifications' in poses, I did not enforce or expect yoga attire, and I offered suggestions for yoga props. As a hearing impaired person who used to stutter, I paid very close attention to my verbal and nonverbal communication, so that the others in the space felt welcome and included in the process of understanding how their own bodies moved."

Please share about your work and the populations you currently serve.

"Edu-Wellness only serves public school teachers working in the most challenging neighborhoods [in what are] considered low-performing schools, as reported through a California database that displays school performance outcomes and progress. I support schools where teacher turnover is high, where internal and external stressors make their jobs challenging. The vision of Edu-Wellness is that through wellness initiatives, like Accessible Yoga, we reverse teacher turnover and burnout, decrease sick days which can be disruptive to the students who rely on their teachers, and increase the likelihood of teachers' positive self-care routine."

Connect with Sher via her website, or by emailing her at [email protected].