Denver Nonprofit Helps First Responders Find Their Flow

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DENVER — First responders all across America are fighting depression by finding their flow thanks to a Denver-based nonprofit.

Olivia Kvitne Mead founded Yoga for First Responders in 2013. Inspired by yoga’s effect on military veterans with PTSD, she went to work helping police officers and firefighters overcome the emotional and physical difficulties of their jobs.

There are lots of yoga programs for veterans but they are all focused on after their tours of duty. That doesn’t happen for first responders. They are in their jobs for 30 years until they retire. They go to work and see trauma, death, destruction, loss and the worst part of humanity, then they have to go home and be a mother or a father, a husband or a wife.

Olivia Kvitne Mead

Mead recognized that yoga could positively impact first responders suffering from mental health issues such as anxiety, alcoholism and depression.

“There is a missing skill set in first responder training and that is what is leading to these high statistics of burnout, divorce, alcoholism and suicides. They need to be taught the ability to handle stress and trauma and process it. Otherwise you are just going to get squished by all the trauma you witness.”

Mead decided to start a nonprofit to help these first responders and it’s been a great success.

Yoga with a fire fighter in front of his truck
Yoga with a fire fighter

She started with the Los Angeles Fire Department in 2013. When she first pitched the idea to work with the fire fighters, some worried that the fire fighters might think they were too manly for yoga. While this is sometimes true, it’s often the exception to the rule.

I worked with one firefighter in Iowa. He was a bigger guy and he didn’t want anything to do with the yoga, but I came back to the fire department to give weekly classes. When I explained to him that I was here to help him do his job and sleep well afterwards, he changed his mind about yoga. He came to every single class I did.


I later learnt that he hadn’t been able to sleep a whole night for a year after being called out to a car accident. He told me one day: ‘After your yoga classes, I was able to sleep last night’.

Olivia Kvitne Mead

Today, Mead and her team work with 35 different cities around the United States. Chicago Police requires that all new police recruits take Mead’s course prior to becoming an officer.

Chicago Police and others around the country have found that yoga not only helps their officers emotionally, but helps them to perform better on the job as well. Fire departments in particular find that fire fighters that participate in regular yoga classes use less oxygen.

“Breath work helps CO2 tolerance in the body. It means that while a firefighter’s air bottle normally lasts 15 minutes in action, we can make it last longer.”

Olivia Kvitne Mead

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