Highlights of Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga Institute (BPYI) 2004!
December, 2004

We are very proud to present to you the highlights of a very meaningful year at the Baptiste Power Yoga Institute. It has been a tremendous year of growth. Our BPYI community grew vertically and exponentially, and we are really excited to greet 2005. This website gets about 30,000 visits each week. So we strive to make our message here as relevant to as many as possible and not only to our ever-growing Boston community. For those local to the Greater Boston area, we thank you for supporting our BPYI studios and programs!

Respect and Dignity as a Team

BPYI has a highly engaged team of people, who are emotionally, intellectually, and energetically committed to achieving something significant: empowering (and in some cases saving), the lives of thousands of people from our local communities and from around the globe. In our team's eyes, BPYI's workplace culture stands for treating each other with respect and dignity, and for making everyone feel valued. In turn, our team members -at every level - give their all, which is evident by how they treat our students and program participants. We have been and continue to be committed to helping people rediscover the best in themselves. Whether a new participant or a returning friend, we offer an experience that will positively impact peoples' lives. We love taking on new challenges that test the core of who we are, and bring out our best as people. We understand that we are here for people as a catalyst, and NOT as the center of the story. We have a group of incredible Baptiste Power Vinyasa teachers - all of whom stand in their own power - spread throughout the country. You'll find gifted Baptiste Power Vinyasa teachers at our Affiliate studios and at our flagship studios in Massachusetts, and our Certified/Associate teachers are peppered across the country and globally.

Products for Personal, Physical and Spiritual Life Development

BPYI offers dozens of titles about Power Vinyasa Yoga, meditation, practical psychology, health and healing, self-discovery, training the trainer/teacher, and more. Our books and audio/video tapes bring to an ever-growing audience important new ideas in a compact, undiluted form -- often years before the information is presented by others. Since 1990, we have served more than 300,000 readers, listeners and viewers through our direct mail/website catalog with this idea in mind: that as we serve people, they can help serve the world. We released two books in 2004; 40 Days to Personal Revolution, published by Simon and Schuster, and also a yoga book for kids & parents; My Daddy Is A Pretzel, published by Barefoot Books. Kids everywhere are loving Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga! Also, St. Martins Press released Baptiste Bootcamp In A Box, BPYI produced and released two monthly subscription audio programs: Monthly Magic: A Home Practice series and Teachers Insight: How To Take Your Seat as a Teacher. We are grateful because all of these products are wildly successful. In 2004 we even filmed a video series in Hawaii which is scheduled for release early next year - stay tuned!

Programs For Empowerment

For over 15 years, BPYI Bootcamps and Workshops have been helping people tap personal potential as well as rediscover the best within themselves and their relationships. Our unique combination of Power Vinyasa Yoga and universal principles of physical health and spiritual sanity - offered in a potent retreat or urban setting at affordable prices - makes us unique among yoga-based programs nationwide. We maintain our excellence in our programs because we focus all of the resources available on creating the very best experience for you.

In 2004, we conducted many standing-room-only Teacher Trainings, Bootcamps, Yoga Journal and Omega Institute Conference workshops in many different locations, attracting the largest numbers of participants to date. Attendance was up 35% from the previous year. In 2004, we introduced our Personal Revolution Weekends (PRW's). The information presented at our PRW's is based on Baron's book: 40 Days to Personal Revolution, and the weekends are often attended by several hundred people who walk away with a sense of physical and spiritual renewal.

The Studios

Our flagship BPYI studio in Cambridge celebrated its 5th year anniversary. This studio is an amazing center for personal growth and physical wellbeing and serves about 1500 students each week and has consistently done so for over 5 years. The downtown Boston studio has had a new birth. We recently signed a new lease and are celebrating our 3rd year anniversary in January.

In conceiving our Guiding Principles we realized that profitability and livelihood needed to be included as core values if we were to continue on serving the community, but we intentionally placed profitability last on this list of our working Guiding Principles. We believe that if we adhere to our strong values, profitability and livelihood will follow. Thus far, this has been the case. Ultimately, BPYI's commitment to social response-ability depends on our team's willingness to adopt and uphold our vision and values.

We made several changes in 2004 to strengthen our studio's organization and position us for future success. We assembled a dynamic team at our central office, allowing us to offer high-quality customer care. We gave our Cambridge studio a complete face-lift, utilizing the least toxic materials and thus providing a better environment so that students can focus and enjoy their practice. We cultivated our volunteer program to allow our studio to build a diverse, community-based team. We also instituted a monthly alignment workshop, and offered various special events at the studios. We even added "Practicing your Pretzels" to our class schedule for kids! Look to our studios in 2005 to continue to offer these wonderful programs to enhance your daily practice.

A special thank you to the Boston studio students and friends. Your level of support has been a powerful statement to the community. In the New Year we will be adding new classes, additional teachers, and specialty programming. As usual our teachers are committed to helping you catapult your body and personal growth to new levels in 2005 and onward.

Contributing Positively To Our Communities and Environment

Contributing positively to our communities and environment is so important to BPYI that it's a guiding principle of our mission statement. We jointly fulfill this commitment with our teachers, managers, volunteers, assistants and staff at all levels of our institute and programs, by getting involved together to help build stronger and healthier communities. Our Bootcamps, Personal Revolution Weekends, Teacher Trainings and studios in Greater Boston and across the country are places that offer more than just great yoga practice, transformation and personal healing. A Baptiste experience or event is really like a third place - beyond home and work - where people of like minds can come together. We feel that this greatly contributes to community life. Environmental and community stewardship is vital for any community to thrive.

In our "studio" communities we have many community-building programs that help us be good neighbors and contribute positively to the communities where our team and customers live, work and practice. We encourage and reward volunteerism and participation in organizations that are important to our team of teachers and staff, including local schools, empowering youth at risk, literacy programs, walk-a-thons and establishing a more enlightened health programs and activities at hospitals and medical centers. Our network of 50-plus volunteers makes certain that no one's economic situation is ever a block to practicing at a Baptiste studio.

The release party for My Daddy Is A Pretzel was held in Los Angeles (at the Yoga House.) Tara Guber, Yoga Ed., And Barefoot Books did a spectacular job in creating a wonderful event. All proceeds went to Yoga Ed., which very successfully brings yoga and self-improvement programs to the under-privileged youth at risk in South Central Los Angeles. Deepak Chopra showed up with his daughter and grandchildren as well as a couple hundred other interesting people, including many Hollywood celebrities, all to support My Daddy Is A Pretzel and the Yoga Ed. vision. Check out the photos from the party.

The actress Ashley Judd, Seane Corne and Baron Baptiste are working closely together to promote the Youth Aids Program: off the mat and into the world. This program supports children living with AIDs. Check out some of the photos from our recent photo shoot.

During his recent trip to DC, Baron was invited by the Southeast Community Hospital to do a talk and presentation on yoga. This hospital is the only hospital in Southeast DC providing care to a very underserved community. The participants were given complimentary copies of My Daddy Is A Pretzel and many of them were eager to try the simple poses as a way to bring more health into their lives. See photos.

Throughout the year, BPYI donates thousands of dollars in gifts such as gift certificates, books and mats for auctions that raise money for local schools and relief organizations. We also offer special classes through out the year to specifically raise money for charity. For our Cambridge studio fifth year anniversary, we held a special day where all class proceeds went to the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care. Also, we are ending 2004 with a special evening New Year's Eve class with all proceeds going to Bread & Jams, a Cambridge organization that provides a safe and supportive environment to the homeless community. The Boston studio is kicking off the year with a 30-Day Yoga Challenge, inviting students to make a commitment to their practice for 30 days and in turn making a donation to the Cam Neeley Foundation for each student that participates.

RECOGNITION

BPYI is very proud to have been recognized in 2004 in the following ways:

Baron was featured on the Today Show, Regis and Kelly, The WB Good Morning Show, as well as a couple dozen other TV and radio talk shows around the country. Redbook Magazine awarded Baron's Journey Into Power Video as one of the best videos of the year. Many other magazines ran stories and interviews presenting Baptiste Power Vinyasa yoga to the public including: US Weekly, Fitness Magazine, In Style, and the American Airlines' Magazine. Baron also completed the first issue of what will be an ongoing column with Women's Health Magazine, which is the sister magazine to Men's Health.

Sharing The Light

All of us at BPYI flow from a true spirit to serve and enrich you, our community and the world at large. We will always fight to support our communities. We are not perfect and we do make mistakes, but the bottom line is that we are not driven by profit, but rather by truth, love and service; knowing full well that all else will follow. We are proud to be an example of a conscious and honest business model that focuses on the hearts and growth of people first, both with its staff and students. As Ghandi said "My god is found in truth." As teachers and support staff we strive with our full faith and confidence to bring truth to what we teach, truth to all our relationships and truth to what we want for you.

Our pledge to you is that whatever you've loved in the past about what we offer - you will now even love it more. We have grown up a lot here at BPYI. We have learned some tough lessons over the years and it has made us all better. That is why you will often see our organization's mantra on our brochures: EVOLVE. Because we have evolved and as a result so will you!

In the pages of this website, you'll find all you need in order to create a better life. Bootcamp and teacher training programs can transform your body, deepen your spirituality and set you on a focused path to extraordinary personal achievement. We are particularly proud of our new product lineup. It covers a remarkable spectrum of topics that can have a surprising practical and powerful impact on your everyday life. With all of our outstanding offerings 2005 could very well be your most successful year ever!

Peace and health! All of us at BPYI