Editorial Team
Publication Date
August 23, 2017
Tatenda Kanengoni, GPJ Zimbabwe
Tendai Angela Jambga showcases yoga postures in Highlands, a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe. Jambga is one of the youngest female black yoga teachers in Zimbabwe.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — A whisper of incense rises as gentle instrumental vibrations mark the beginning of one of Tendai Angela Jambga’s yoga classes in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city.
“Where do you pack away your emotions?” she asks her class, encouraging them to get in touch with their emotions.
The idea of coming home to oneself is a guiding principle in Jambga’s classes. The young instructor has found her way home to Zimbabwe after work and study took her around the world.
“A yoga teacher is able to tell you that by doing the asanas like this, you are able to come home to yourself on a mat,” Jambga says of the postures that are a core part of yoga practice.
While pursuing a law degree in Australia, Jambga traveled to Italy for an internship, where music was used as a tool to combat gang violence. She says the program in Italy, along with a social entrepreneurship conference in Norway, enabled her to realize she wanted to develop solutions to cultural and environmental issues back home in Zimbabwe. Several years earlier she took her mother, who was recovering from back surgery, to yoga therapy.
Altogether, she says, these life experiences pointed her in the direction of becoming a yoga teacher.
“As time went on, I started to really enjoy it,” she says of yoga. “And even though it was sessions for my mother, it felt like somehow they were also doing something for me. I had not realized that I was also going through trauma.”
Thandeka Mteto, a pilot who takes Jambga’s classes, agrees.
“Yoga is an all encompassing spiritual practice. I felt my mind calm down and the noise that surrounds me in my life quieted down,” Mteto says.
Jambga recently returned to Zimbabwe after attending yoga training in Bali. On her trip, she says she decided to offer free yoga classes to pass on the art to her community in Zimbabwe.
She is leading free yoga sessions for women with endometriosis, a disorder that affects the uterus, from the nongovernmental organization As I Am Foundation, as well as to facilitators from a children’s rehabilitation home.
Janaida Lalla, who is part of the endometriosis support group, takes Jambga’s classes. She says the classes are helping her manage pain.
“Last week I attended class in spite of my endo [endometriosis] pain and had the most amazing class which did not make my pain worse or make me struggle to do any of the poses,” Lalla says.
Salma Selina Cho who also attends the free classes says she finds them relaxing.
“Going to her yoga class is like an escape for me, it helps me unwind, relax and let go of all negativity,” says Cho.
Rose Jambga, whose therapy sessions helped her daughter discover yoga, appreciates her daughter’s commitment to becoming a teacher.
“I am proud because she embraced a new way of dealing with the body to decrease anxiety and stress,” Rose Jambga says. “She became less stressed, sure of herself, more driven with her projects and executing ideas calmer.”
Tendai Jambga agrees.
“Yoga for me is like self-love in motion,” she says.
