Grow Your Yoga: North American Challenge For a Cause

TORONTO, April 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ - International hot yoga leader Modo Yoga is launching their 5^th annual "Grow Your Yoga" campaign which is a 30-day community-wide challenge that inspires students to embrace a daily practice, while at the same time raising money for a charitable organization. This year's beneficiary is Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organization that matches children who are facing adversity with caring adult volunteers.

Grow Your Yoga encourages participants to practice yoga every day from May 1st to 30^th, and to engage with the "Seven Pillars" of Modo Yoga (a set of ideas and philosophies to live by): Be Healthy, Be Accessible, Live Green, Sangha Support, Reach Out, Live to Learn, and Be Peace.

Participants can sign up for the daily Grow Your Yoga email that provides inspiration for the challenge, emphasizes the Seven Pillars, and offers suggestions for taking their practice out of the hot yoga room and into their daily life. Modo Yoga studios across the United States will be donating 100% of their April & May Karma Class funds to Big Brothers Big Sisters. Last year, Grow Your Yoga raised more than $84,000 for The Massai Wilderness Conservation Trust, and the goal this year is to raise $100,000.

Registration for the challenge can be done at all participating Modo Yoga Studios located in Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Kentucky, New York and Los Angeles.

There is growing evidence and research that supports the fact that yoga not only improves physical health, but also mental health and wellbeing. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, 20% of Americans will personally experience a mental illness in their lifetime. Practicing yoga on a regular basis can go a long way to helping with depression and reducing stress and anxiety - both major contributors to diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and osteoporoses.

Modo Yoga is a group of independent hot yoga studios that are committed to ethical, compassionate and environmentally conscious living. Founded in 2004 by Ted Grand and Jessica Robertson it has since grown into a community of more than 65 studios worldwide, who collectively raise more than $500,000 annually for local and international charities/organizations.

SOURCE Modo Yoga