The piece is about the zen yoga program that Manijeh Rabiei started in the poorest part of Iran for the most deprived women and children. Manijeh took Daizan’s 200hour zen yoga teacher training in 2023 and mindfulness teacher training in 2024. This is her new purpose and calling after retirement from a long career as a historian, educator, and academic.
“Zen Yoga began in Iran two years ago. It first started with those who are the managers of an NGO for child labourers. A group of these women who manage this organization in Tehran started practicing in online yoga classes two days a week. I hold these classes online and from Canada. After a short time, these women suggested that we set up these classes for women in Zahedan, southeast of Iran. A month after the classes started in Tehran, these classes were also active in Zahedan. In Zahedan, mothers of working children and the children’s instructors participated. The mothers of these children, whose husbands are not present at home due to addiction or unemployment and extreme poverty, face many problems. The women and their daughters have been forced to work long hours and produce needlework and handicrafts. These young women suffer physical pain in their backs, legs, necks, and shoulders due to poverty, poor nutrition, and long intense manual labor.
As the classes began, the pain gradually subsided and these women became more interested in the classes.
In addition, the women who are the instructors and teachers of working children at the centre, who run educational and teaching classes for working children are also victims of child forced marriage, or child brides. These young girls were married as children and were divorced by their husbands at the age of 17-18. They go to this center to have a productive life, education and a job. They became instructors to children who are experiencing similar lives as child labourers and child brides. These women were able to get their highschool diploma while working at the centre, despite many struggles at home. They also participate in yoga classes at the centre. These instructors use an interesting initiative in their classes for working with children who have dropped out of school. Since the children in their classes have suffered serious psychological trauma, constant anxiety is the main characteristic of these children. The instructors started to meditate with the children for ten minutes before starting the class and found the result very positive, as the children’s ability to learn and stay attentive increased.
Because of the time differences between Canada and Zahedan, it is difficult to coordinate a time that allows me to hold multiple classes for these children and women. The young women have to return home during daylight for safety and security, it became difficult to adjust the class time to Zahedan time and hold it when it is daylight, particularly in wintertime and shorter days. So I thought I would specifically train one or two of the women instructors so that they could hold classes at the right time and increase the number of classes for them. I taught some basic Zen Yoga moves to two instructors one day a week so that they can run additional Zahedan yoga classes. Zahedan is a remote province in Sistan-Baluchestan, which is very deprived compared to an area like Tehran, so the reception and enthusiasm for having yoga lessons and mindfulness activity was extremely high.
We have managed to allocate a practice room for yoga and meditation in Zahedan classes, at the Centre for Working Children – the non for profit centre. I provided basic equipment such as yoga mats, belts, water bottles and blocks.
We recently started working on creating a new centre in Zabol, a city that is even more impoverished and deprived than Zahedan. We hope to run regular yoga classes there too.“