I wrote this article for Rodale’s Organic Life:
Students in Baltimore are being sent to meditation and yoga practice when they act up in class and the results are extraordinary.
It started 15 years ago when a struggling school in a low-income neighborhood hired three Baltimore natives in their early twenties, Andres Gonzalez and brothers Ali and Atman Smith, to run an after-school football program for “problem kids.”
The trio agreed to facilitate, but pointed out that teaching the kids, who already had issues with aggression, how to smash into each other might not be the most productive means of calming them down.
Instead, the trio of young teachers took what they had learned from studying Eastern traditions and yoga, set aside the pads and helmets, and showed the kids how to practice mindfulness and downward dogs on repurposed wrestling mats. The results were transformational.
“The worst behaved kids became leaders among their peers,” Gonzalez says. “The ones who had been fighting became the ones breaking up fights.”
The now 37-year-old Gonzalez says many kids, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, are constantly surrounded by overwhelming stimuli that can make them high-strung, anxious, and defensive: some don’t get to eat before they come to school, or don’t get to sleep because there’s violence in the house; some don’t have parents at home because they’re dead or incarcerated.
“These kids are facing PTSD,” Gonzalez explains, “and they need solutions and coping mechanisms. For example, if Johnny has a fight in class, most schools will send him to the office. The moment he gets to the office he gets more upset, because now he knows his parents are going to be mad too. Then he gets suspended, and he gets even more upset. He didn’t get any tools or techniques to prevent future occurrences. But if you bring Johnny to a mindfulness room instead, he gets to talk with someone, and to learn breathing exercises and meditation tools that can help with balance and self-control. He also gets someone to look up to.”
I’m running down Kelly Drive in Philadelphia on an unseasonably warm fall day, my purple sneakers softly thudding against the ground. As I run, I notice a young boy skateboarding on the street, and the way his red hat flops to the side. I pass dry-looking trees and plump geese gathered in the grass next to the trail, and a couple kissing on a rock overlook. I notice the way the water ripples as a 
This was a fun little FOB article to write for the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Boston Weddings