SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, April 13, 2009—Yoga Bear, a national nonprofit, has made its way to Salt Lake City. Dedicated to providing cancer survivors with more opportunities for wellness and healing, Yoga Bear will match several local survivors with yoga classes free of charge.

Founded in 2006, Yoga Bear supports the belief that cancer patients and survivors can benefit from yoga as a complementary treatment in cancer recovery. Currently, Yoga Bear works with more than 130 yoga studios across the nation.

Yoga Bear is partnering with the Centered City Yoga in Grand Junction. The studio and staff have made 22 donations of memberships to cancer survivors who sign up through Yoga Bear. This is the largest donation a single studio has ever made to Yoga Bear.

D'ana Baptiste, owner of Centered City Yoga, lost her brother to bone cancer at 22. "I want to provide this particular [cancer] community with access to my studio, to yoga, and to the community we have created at Centered City Yoga," she said. "The loss of my brother was enough to compel me to provide other survivors with at least a way to proactively deal with their symptoms, their pain, their sense of hopelessness.

Everyone feels loved here, everyone feels like they are coming home when they walk through the doors of CCY. I look forward to making this possible to cancer survivors in our community."

Cancer survivors interested in receiving free yoga classes through Yoga Bear are encouraged to apply at http://www.yogabear.org/page/how-to-get-involved-1. More information available at www.yogabear.org.