The seed of Anahata International was planted in 2007, when founder Angela Cerkevich teamed up with Never Again Rwanda to launch a community yoga teacher training in Kigali, Rwanda. The Rwanda Project was a great success, with yoga teachers continuing to serve as community leaders today and catalyzed the official launch of Anahata in early 2008. In March 2010, Anahata merged with Finding Grace, a Washington, DC-based organization serving vulnerable communities through yoga and other wellness services. As a unified organization, Anahata Grace deepened and broadened in scope to serve vulnerable communities in the nation’s capital and around the world. In July 2012, Anahata expanded its international work by beginning a series of foundational teacher trainings to the West Bank with the goal of building sustainable yoga programs to empower communities. In partnership with Farashe Yoga, a nonprofit yoga center based in Ramallah, Anahata has graduated dozens of yoga and meditation teachers in the West Bank and continues to support these teachers through ongoing support and continuing education. Learn more.

In 2020, Anahata came under the guidance of Bhakti Yoga DC. in 2019, the owner of Bhakti Yoga DC, Gopi Kinnicutt, formed a program called Yogis Give Back with the goal of empowering members of the BYDC community to offer volunteer services to the community. A small group formed and trained over a period of one year to network with local communities in need and organizations that served those who where traumatized and marginalized. BYDC volunteers began to offer regular yoga and mindfulness classes to the partnerships established. BYDC also had food distribution and greener and cleaner programs at that time. Meanwhile, Anahata International had undergone some changes over a period of a few years and approached BYDC to see if they would be interested in taking over the charity. It was a perfect fit for the services and mission BYDC was already doing, and working with the board of Anahata the transition was made in January 2020.