Yoga for our Military, Veterans, their Families and Communities
With Mike Stickley – 200 RYT
Sunday November 26, 12:00-1:00pm, FREE (we will be collecting donations for VEToga). Please pre-register on our website!
Soaring Spirit Yoga Studio (703) 499-9114
308 Poplar Alley, Historic Occoquan, VA
Yoga assists in welcoming home war veterans and provides them tools to manage mental, emotional and physical challenges related to combat. We have seen first-hand the healing effects of yoga for many current and former troops. In collaboration with the non-profit, VEToga, students will gain an understanding of which yoga postures, breathing methods and meditation practices are effective during and after deployment.
Open to all active duty military personnel and veterans (including Reservists and National Guard members) and their family members. Mike served Active Duty in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1998-2003 both in the continental United States and abroad. Mike began his yogic journey in 2015 while training for his third Marine Corps Marathon to help relieve some running injuries in his IT band, feet and legs. He explored an Alignment Focus class in Washington, DC by a suggestion of colleague and little did he know that this was the beginning of his yogic path. In January 2017, he became a yoga teacher through the non-profit organization Vetoga, which specializes in providing Meditation, Yoga and Healing Arts to Active Duty Military, Reservists, and First Responders. His style of yoga is based on the teachings of Sri Dharma Mittra and he plans to provide yoga to our military members and their families as he continues his education in yoga by starting his training in Sattva yoga fall 2017. Mike brings a smile and beaming heart to his practice by providing his light that he has found through his yoga practice.
“If you open your heart and become like a child, you will always be blissful, always content” – Sri Dharma Mittra
Register at: www.soaringspirityogastudio.com
Or call 703.499.9114
The Northern Virginia Veterans Association takes no responsibility for, and exercises no control over the linked organizations or its views, contents, nor does it vouch for the accuracy or accessibility of the information contained on the destination server.
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to
