 Our team would show up at community centers, like, hey, you all want to do yoga? You know, people would laugh, like, yoga? What'd you say, girl? Like, people really had no clue what we were talking about. Carrie is not just a teacher. She's a healer. And she owns a company called Organic Flow. What makes small business owners so special and inspiring is that they really are small giants. My name is Nega Julia. I'm a writer, photographer, creator, and Detroit local. In this series, I'll be taking you around the city and introducing you to the small business owners and entrepreneurs that help power it. This is Icons of Detroit. Organic Flow started as a grassroots yoga class. She's investing much more than a stretching class or yoga or breathing. It's an all-inclusive approach to physical and mental wellness for free within her community. I really felt called to do this in Detroit because a lot of people here have experienced the things that I was facing when I was seeking yoga, grief, depression, justified anger in terms of environmental racism, structural racism, institutional racism, all of these things. It creates this tension and anger in so many people in my community. How do we deal with all of these things in a healthful way? We're going to start on our right side so it shifts the energy towards our right. It's a community-based organization to share the practice of yoga. It was incredible to see every body shape, every hair type, every skin color, to feel like they were in a safe space. It made you think that this should actually be the norm when it comes to wellness in anybody's community. When I was 21 years old, I was diagnosed prehypertensive. And I would guess that a lot of that had to do with my external stressors being surrounded by hopelessness. I would say that's what a lot of people probably feel when they're living in poverty, when they're seeing their friends get killed, when they're losing loved ones to these very preventable ailments. And it was because they weren't moving their bodies and because they were also so stressed. So for me, offering yoga was a great way just to contribute to the culture of health in my community. When dealing with stress, when dealing with anxiety, when dealing with the concrete jungle that we all reside in, she's saying, hey, this has affected my life. This has cured certain ailments for me. This has done wonders for my mental health. And why shouldn't my community have access to that affordability? I didn't really know of any yoga studios in the inner city of Detroit. There were like one. And that wasn't even like in the inner city, inner city. It was in an area that was transitioning quickly and becoming gentrified. So many people in my community didn't even necessarily feel comfortable going there. I really wanted my friends, my family, my neighbors to have a space where they didn't have to worry about not having enough money to get in or where they didn't have to worry about what clothing to wear. We just really wanted to have a space where people could come as they are and pay what they could so they could start to take care of their mind and body despite all the challenges they may be facing.