Space To Breathe

Celebrating five years of service, the nonprofit Exhale to Inhale brings free, trauma-informed yoga classes to rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters in New York and California.

- Brittany Risher

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First it was her mother. Then it was a friend in college. And another friend. And another friend. As each person told Zoë LePage her experience of domestic or sexual violence, she was moved by the survivors. “I was furious that my loved ones had gone through this—that someone had violated them like this and made them feel less than. I wanted to create space for them and other individuals who had similar experiences, so they could do the work of healing,” she says.

Then, in her senior year of college, LePage’s women’s leadership–studies program tasked her with finding a way to change the world. She knew it needed to address trauma from sexual and domestic assaults.