Celebrating Sea Change Yoga's 2021 YTT Scholarship Recipients: Kaylin Kerina and Eunice Nuna

We are proud to recognize and announce the two extraordinary recipients of Sea Change Yoga’s newly developed Yoga Teacher Training Scholarship, Kaylin Kerina and Eunice Nuna! Kay and Nuna are both passionate community leaders and advocates who hold a wealth of diverse lived and professional experience. We are honored to welcome Kay and Nuna to the Sea Change family!

Kaylin Kerina was born in Bath, and left Maine after high school for college. She returned to Maine in the spring of 2016, and has been working since then in Human Services and Social Work with the youth of Portland. She is involved with many organizations in the community and has recently joined a 200 YTT training at Arcana in downtown Portland. 

Kaylin has always loved what yoga was able to do to help restore her body when she was a young dancer, and she loves diving into yoga in a more meditative and healthy way as an adult. Kaylin has found that within her studies in social work and her current work, she is ready to expand her knowledge of yoga and practice into social work endeavors to help the "cura personalis", or the care of the whole person. Kaylin currently finds herself at a crossroads in her practice, since she has struggled to feel seen as a person of color in the Maine yoga community. There are very few BIPOC safe yoga spaces, and she wants to create those spaces in the Greater Portland community, and throughout Maine. This crossroads for her is very important, as she wants to create space and give honor to the incredible culture that gave us this gift of practice and meditation. She wants to help educate others about the true meaning and history of where yoga comes from so they have the tools to dive deeper and, even for the first time, create their own practice in a safe and meaningful way. 

Kaylin's goal for her yoga teacher training is to make safe, adaptive, and inclusive classes that welcome those that would not usually have the opportunity or feel safe enough to join a yoga class. She is eager to find ways to meet the community where they are, and to make yoga classes an accessible option for any and all that want to be a part. 

Eunice Nuna is an asylum seeker from Kenya who works as Executive Director at Wounded Healers International. Nuna is also a psychologist, rape survivor, and public speaker. She is passionate about raising awareness about African immigrants’ lived experience of violence and mental illness and the role that stigma plays in a person’s access to support. She supports young women survivors of sexual violence in gaining confidence, self-dependency, and leadership, and working to end rape and rape culture. Nuna is dedicated to giving all children and women the ability to heal and protect themselves against all types of violence. Personally, yoga has helped Nuna center her mind and focus on herself--and she also enjoys dancing and running.