Your weekend, simplified: June 21, 2024

Happy Friday! Megan here.

Weather check: You'll never guess...rain.

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A Litte Help update: You GUYS! We have raised nearly $2,200 for Journey of Hope. Just nine more days to hit our goal of $5,000, and every little bit helps this awesome nonprofit help more people in our community.

Donate here!

This weekend, you'll see a new side of Journey of Hope and how the nonprofit is inspiring at-risk kids through the arts. You'll also get smart about yoga and find some Super Simplified Stories. Plus, we asked the experts – will it ever stop raining?

And now, news:

A LITTLE HELP

How Journey of Hope is helping kids process trauma through art

Editor's note: This story is part of Sioux Falls Simplified's "A Little Help" give-back effort. We're sharing stories all month long about Journey of Hope with the goal of raising $5,000 to support the ongoing operations of this local nonprofit. You can learn more here and donate here.

Simplified: Journey of Hope – a Sioux Falls nonprofit focused on inspiring hope by meeting people where they are on their journey – brings regular art sessions to kids at the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) as a way to help them process past trauma and set goals for the future.

Why it matters

Journey of Hope first connected with JDC a few years ago to ask how the nonprofit could support incarcerated kids. They began providing hygiene kits to kids as they leave the facility.
- That partnership has since expanded, and Journey of Hope now offers regular yoga classes and art as therapy sessions.
These sessions give kids a chance to not only process their emotions in a new way, but they also give the kids a positive interaction with an adult in the community, said Nate Ellens, assistant director at JDC.
It's not about being "good" at art or completing a project to get a good grade, said Lisa Brunick, a longtime art teacher and licensed art therapist who leads the art session. It's about feeling your feelings.

"They get permission from an adult to be more real and let their guard down for a minute which takes a lot of courage on their part," Brunick said. "I frequently acknowledge that ... I'm just giving you a chance to make your mark."

What's a typical art as therapy session like?

Learn more here. And donate to our A Little Help campaign here.

GET SMART

Get smart about yoga, mindfulness and the summer solstice with Sarah Lindemulder

Sarah Lindemulder has been teaching yoga since 2012, and last year, she opened her own studio – Joy Collective Yoga, where she focuses on teaching alignment-based yoga. She sat down with Sioux Falls Simplified to talk about yoga, mindfulness and the summer solstice.

Answers are edited for length and clarity. Responses are quotes from Lindemulder.

How did you get smart about practicing and teaching yoga? What in your background led you to where you are today?

I had been in a career of social work, working in refugee and immigrant foster care, and I got really depressed, overworked and burnt out. I had tried yoga a few times and stumbled upon a studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I was living.

I moved to Sioux Falls eight years ago, and two friends I worked with at Coffea encouraged me ... I started offering private lessons and teaching on and off private lessons, then group classes, then started teaching at some studios in town.

Last year during the spring equinox, I opened Joy Collective.

We're all about simplicity here–can you describe what practicing yoga means to you in 10 words or fewer?

To me, yoga is about embodiment and connection with our world.

What's a common misconception about yoga, and how would you set the record straight?

The biggest thing that irks me is the idea of love and light and good vibes only which you see on shirts all the time. My understanding is it's spiritual bypassing – wishing we could pretend all the agony and suffering that is real in the world (doesn't exist).

We can hold the tragedy and also recognize that there's space for growth and wild joy and freedom all at the same time. All those things can be true at the same time.

See the full interview here

TL;DR

Super Simplified Stories

New touch pool opens. The Butterfly House and Aquarium this week opened a new touch pool exhibit featuring both horseshoe and spider crabs. The new exhibit is configured to be more accessible to kids and folks of all abilities. The animals also have more space than in the previous touch pool exhibit. Here's a photo:

WEATHER

Will it ever stop raining?

Simplified: The Sioux Falls area has seen about four more inches of rain this year than normal, and that's before accounting for all the rain Thursday night (and yet to come this weekend). We asked National Weather Service Sioux Falls Meteorologist Todd Heitkamp a very important question: Will it ever stop raining?

Photo by Anna Atkins / Unsplash

So...will it?

Short answer, yes, obviously. (It'll turn to snow eventually, right? Just kidding. We'll see the sun again.)

But the reality is we've gotten a lot more rain than average this year. It's meant no drought in eastern South Dakota for the first time in about five years, Heitkamp said.

"Everyone's talking about how much we need the rain," Heitkamp said. "Well, we got the rain, and now we can't turn it off."

Is all this rain good?

Well, we needed rain, but Heitkamp said at this point it's too much of a good thing.

"Any time you get this amount of water in this amount of time, it's going to cause some issues," he added.

Learn more here

THIS AND THAT

What I'm falling for this weekend:

ICYMI

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Thank you

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