Listen to the interview here!
Carrie Culverhouse
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I am with Carrie Culverhouse. Welcome to the Project, Carrie.
Carrie Culverhouse: Hi, Toni. Thank you.
Toni: Carrie, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Carrie: I guess there’s a lot to share, but I would just say what had me invited to this particular Project is my founding of the Berks Karma Yoga Club, which is a volunteer not-for-profit outreach organization in Berks County that I started to help people get involved in selfless service and conscious action.
In addition to that, I am interning as a therapist in West Chester. I’m back in school in clinical social work. I’m almost done with that. I teach yoga and meditation, and I do retreats and workshops.
Toni: Wow! You’re a busy lady.
Carrie: I am.
Toni: Let’s go to the first question of the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Carrie: Being someone who writes, I was playing around with this, because I was trying to think of the difference between inspired and inspiration, and that was a tough one for me. I guess I would say what my partner shared with me, and that is movement; a compulsion from the heart to go out into the world and do better. Leave an impact based on something I’ve seen someone else … or even for me, I guess, something in nature can inspire me.
Toni: So it’s something that moves you.
Carrie: Yes.
Toni: You’re inspired when something moves you, but you have to take action about it. Is that what inspiration means to you?
Carrie: Yes; but I guess it would be that particular connection for me from the heart. It has to really touch my heart for me to then go and take action.
Toni: Can you give me an example?
Carrie: Yes. The biggest example I can think of is the human trafficking awareness efforts we just did throughout January. I got involved with that after I saw a screening of the movie, “Very Young Girls” and read the book “Girls Like Us” both by Rachel Lloyd who founded GEMS in New York City. It was all about human trafficking in the United States.
I had always been involved in advocating human trafficking awareness abroad, but once I saw that film, it really turned my attention to what’s happening in the United States, and in particular, what’s happening here in Berks County. I guess I could say in that instance, I just felt so much compassion and overwhelming sorrow for what’s not seen in the United States, and really felt that at a heart level, and knew that I needed to go out into the community and do something about what’s going on here.
Toni: Let’s go to the second question where maybe you can give us a little more detail on that. The second question is, how do you put that inspired action, as you refer to it, into practice here in Berks County? Tell me a little bit about that. You wanted to bring awareness to human trafficking in Berks County, or is it an issue here in Berks County?
Carrie: It is an issue here in Berks County. Fortunately, there already is a not-for-profit, which I found in my research called Freedom and Restoration For Everyone Enslaved who specifically raises awareness and affects legislation in Berks County around human trafficking. It was a really nice window of opportunity for Berks Karma Yoga Club to then get involved in fundraising and raising awareness for their organization.
I guess I would say how I put my inspiration into practice would be through Berks Karma Yoga Club, through my yoga and meditation workshops and retreats, but also trying to help other people rise up as leaders and inspire. I think that’s a big part of the work I do is trying to facilitate other people to step into action and leadership.
Toni: First, they have to be aware so they can be inspired so that they can take action. What are some of the other organizations that you’ve been involved with as far as your organization that you’ve tried to help?
Carrie: I guess my original inspiration in even starting Berks Karma Yoga Club is through my involvement with Off the Mat, Into the World, which is an extremely powerful national not-for-profit that helps train and facilitate leadership within the yoga world. They’re involved in a tremendous amount of social activism and outreach, and they try and help people who are in the yoga world go back into their communities and do selfless service and make an impact. That was the biggest influence on me in terms of the club.
In terms of who we’ve helped, we have helped a number of organizations and not-for-profits in Berks County, whether it’s been providing free yoga classes, health workshops, putting on parties for them. Off the top of my head, I am thinking of Children’s Home, which we’ve been heavily involved in. We bring yoga to them every week. We’ve put on a party for them. Berks Women In Crisis, the Safe House, we’ve been involved with them a lot. We’ve brought them workshops every month on health and wellness topics. We’ve brought yoga. We were doing that I believe every other week.
We put on a party for them this Christmas for the children, and it was a particularly touching party, because a lot of these children have never experienced a safe Christmas or a safe holiday. Community members donated presents. We had different restaurants around Berks donate food.
What was wonderful for me in terms of going back to inspiring other people is that this is a project that I really asked someone else in Berks Karma Yoga Club if she could be the chair of it, and she really did an amazing job – Colleen Vargo. That was nice to see that leaders are rising up within.
Toni: So you really are putting into practice your own inspiration through this organization.
Carrie: Yes.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Carrie: That question is such a good one, and a tough one at the same time, because so many people inspire me. I tend to surround myself these days with people who inspire me, whereas maybe in my past, I would have liked to have been around people who didn’t. Now I find just the opposite.
My friends inspire me greatly. Being in the social work field and the psychology field, I’d have to say a lot of the quiet workers in places like Children’s Home, Opportunity House, Berks Women In Crisis – there’s just so much that’s done every single day that most people don’t see, and these jobs working with at risk community members are often thankless jobs and exhausting jobs, and I just get really inspired to see these individual’s commitment to their clients regardless of how exhausting and over-taxing their jobs are.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Carrie: I think I would like my legacy to be someone who has done their best to help other people see their goodness and bring their goodness into the world. There are definitely specific goals I have in mind, but I’m always thinking of this line we hear a lot in recovery, which is, “If you want to make God laugh, make plans.” While I have these goals in mind, I think it’s more the overall intention of helping individuals heal, and then from that place of healing and wholeness, they go out and do good.
Toni: Thank you very much for doing the important work that you’re doing, and also being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Carrie: Thank you very much for having me.
