"Growing intolerance and attacks on people’s fundamental rights continue to erode the considerable progress achieved over the years, finds FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2020. As Europe begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic we see a worsening of existing inequalities and threats to societal cohesion." 
Source: FRA European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

Dana Federman is the founder of Yoga Hub Berlin, the German capital’s yoga initiative that comes with a strong agenda on inclusiveness.

In 2018 the first studio opened its doors to create an environment of actively letting people of different cultures and backgrounds in, and making them feel welcome. Together, they practice yoga and pilates with international teachers in English, French and other languages, at affordable prices. Tea is being served before and after the sessions on carpets with seat cushions, inviting to get involved in a chat in a quiet and peaceful surrounding.

Yoga Hub Berlin has a different approach than yoga as a lifestyle trend. For Dana, yoga is all about being social in person. Part of the initiative includes offering free classes and teacher training courses to refugees and other underrepresented groups. The new, second studio is extended by a quiet co-working space with a nursery, bringing mums back to business at their own pace. She aims to create a home with her studios.

Dana is following an intrinsic endeavour to overcome fear and hatred, and to support one another. Born and bred in Israel, an upbringing in the Middle East teaches you about tension, she says. After the mandatory military service in Israel, she started travelling, and eventually moved to Berlin in 2015, where she now lives with her husband and daughter, who was born in the year of her first studio opening – An experience that taught her the challenges of handling a baby and work at the same time first hand. Maybe even more so as a mother, the currently rapidly increasing hate and racism tendencies all over the world worry her. Coming from Israel to Berlin enabled her for the first time to work very closely with people from other countries in the Middle East, and to get to know them on a deeper and more personal level. “I enjoyed working with them; we've had many similar interests and we've had such a positive experience so I wanted, as an Israeli, to meet more people from the Middle East, and I want to have more personal interaction with people from different backgrounds in general”, she says.

When her mum sadly passed away from a long battle of cancer in 2017, and following that, experiencing some family related conflicts which created a lot of negative energies and stress in her life she wanted to create in her life more positivity in some way. Dana practices yoga for 20 years, and especially in these times it helped her to have her heart open and let go of worries, and so she decided to create a space where people could free themselves from any negativity in their lives and through yoga and meditation practice and with a supportive atmosphere they could overcome any challenge. Eventually, she founded the first Yoga Hub Berlin studio, with a warm and inviting atmosphere where international people come together and meet on a regular basis. The yoga courses focus on the classic yoga only, such as the traditional Hatha, where the focus is on the body & mind work, that includes a lot of meditation. It helps to be more relaxed, and open minded. Her team at Yoga Hub Berlin follows the same vision of opening up, and the yoga teachers stay around before and after their courses for an open ear, and thus the community development.

Get to know Dana, her team and the community of Yoga Hub Berlin on the occasion of the 2nd Studio Opening Week, including 7 days of free yoga classes and coworking.

Learn more at https://www.yogahubberlin.com/

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Yoga Hub Berlin - hosting a vibrant, diverse & multi-cultural community