Who We Are
The Clearing Space was built from a memory.
It was 2013. Senior year of high school. I was in AP gym at Armstrong, in a yoga class at the YMCA with five of my classmates. We were the only Black people in the room.
I had a good time in my body. The movement felt right. But one by one, my friends got up and walked out, and I stayed. In Savasana, lying still on that floor, I understood why. The physical place my body was resting in didn't reflect the world we actually lived in. It didn't reflect us. And that mattered. That's why they left.
I stayed. And I've been trying to build the room I wish we'd walked into ever since.
About Charles
I'm Charles Bolling II, a certified yoga teacher, neighborhood organizer, and healer based in Churchill, Richmond, Virginia. My pronouns are they/them.
After graduating from Armstrong High School in 2014, I attended a discipleship school in Humboldt County, California. Those years were formative and also painful. I came through them carrying a lot around my identity as a Black queer person, and carrying the kind of spiritual harm that can happen when institutions aren't safe for the people inside them.
In 2016, I found yoga again. This time it felt safe. This time it felt like liberation. But the lack of diversity was still there, still real, still a barrier for people who looked like me and the communities I love.
In 2020, during the uprising for racial justice, I led a meditation at a teach-in that changed the course of my life. That moment earned me a scholarship for yoga teacher training, and I haven't looked back.
Since then I've founded Radical Yogi, a platform exploring the intersection of yoga, mindfulness, and social change, and co-founded Every Table, a worshiping community rooted in radical hospitality and collective liberation.
I practice because I believe radical self-care is a path to liberation. I teach because I want to help liberate other people. I'm training to become a yoga therapist because I want to help liberate my communities
Training and Certifications
Yoga Teacher Training, Humble Haven Yoga, with Suzanne Burns E-RYT
Mindfulness for Educators, with Ashley Williams C-IAYT
Teaching Trans Inclusive Yoga, with Alle Kamela
• Conscious Marketing, with Tristan Katz
In Gratitude
I want to acknowledge the ancestors who made this work and this being possible.
Nanci Rozier Bolling and Charles Bolling Evalyn Natalie Jones Bolling and David Alan Bolling Mary Alice Taylor Rozier and Spencer Waverly Rozier
What The Clearing Is
The Clearing Space is a cooperative, liberation-centered yoga and wellness studio. We live online and in community spaces across Richmond right now, while we build toward a permanent home, a space that belongs to the people who show up in it.
Our classes follow a simple rhythm: breath, movement, meditation, and deep rest. We almost always end with Yoga Nidra and Savasana, because rest isn't the reward for working hard. Rest is part of the practice.
This space is for people who have felt like wellness wasn't for them. You don't need the right body, the right background, or any experience. You just have to come.
Healing is not a luxury. It's a right.
Contact us
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