January 2026 – Meeting Minutes

IMIYA BOARD MEETING Sunday January 18, 2026 4:30pm

ATTENDING President: Joanne Pearson Vice President: Rebecca Wallace Secretary: Charlotte Hardwicke Treasurer: Cecilia Huisman Scholarship: Mandy Coates, Melanie Doskocil Membership: Kara Durland Outreach/Communication: Sara Mahowald

AGENDA
BOARD
Rebecca has been involved with IYNAUS meetings. We need to explore how we want to move forward as a Region. Please come with your ideas and thoughts to share later in the meeting.
What would your ideal region look like?
What kind of benefits would you like to see offered?
What other things are important to support you and our members as a regional association?
T-shirts (Melanie/Mandy)
The board needs to make some final decisions as a group to move forward with the t-shirt plans.
Kelly at Living Yoga would like to take some of the IMIYA t-shirts. Mandy asked her to pull out her old IMIYA shirts and take a picture. Kelly is interested in having a movie night as an IMIYA event. April is a possibility.

Regional
Does everyone want a generic IMIYA tshirt? Members could go online to a third party vendor, and choose a color/size and have it shipped to them. Melanie/Mandy need a high-res photo of the logo.

Convention t-shirt. The Board discussed tying the IMIYA theme to the overall convention theme of Freedom. Is it possible to have the T-shirt ready so that people could order it and have the shirts ready for people to purchase? We need to learn how long it will take for people to order and have it shipped to them. Melanie and Many are going to move forward with both an IMIYA t-shirt and convention t-shirt.

GRANTS (Mandy Coates, Melanie Doskocil)
Melanie and Rebecca are working with Nicholas to refund a grant awardee who had already paid the convention registration.
3 full scholarships to the convention have been awarded to members.
IMIYA is planning to offer some additional grants.
There is still a hundred dollars to distribute. The Board discussed the best way to distribute this money.

REGIONAL REP (Rebecca Wallace)
Regional reps are meeting monthly to discuss the future of regional organizations. Rebecca brought a few questions to the Board to get feedback. Board members can reach out to Rebecca with their thoughts. If we were to merge with another identity, then we could share the expense of insurance, outside accounting, website maintenance. This doesn’t address the continuing education offerings.
Some members shared that there would be benefits to merging regions.
There is no current President of IYNAUS so the Executive Council is acting to make decisions that the President would make. IYNAUS is an all-volunteer organization.
The Board discussed some of the reasons that IYNAUS is seeking to re-organize the national organization. This will likely happen in 2026. For instance, Yoga Alliance has two different organizations, a 501c6 and 501c3.
There are currently around 3,000 IYNAUS members.

SOCIAL MEDIA (Sara Mahowald)
The board discussed using royalty-free images in the newsletter.
Sara asked about the Root Instagram account and asked if the Co Spgs people collaborate on posts with Root, that we could tag IMIYA in the post.

MEMBERSHIP/Newsletter (Kara Durland)
Kara asked if Mandy and Joanne could write a little blurb about attending Nancy Stechert’s workshop (Jan 16-18, 2026).

TREASURER (Cecilia Huisman)
IMIYA income is down. All our incoming money is from memberships and occasional donations, but the trend is downward. All expenses have also gone up (Quickbooks, Constant Contact, etc.)

YOGA AND EQUITY (Joanne Pearson)

SECRETARY/WEBSITE (Charlotte Hardwicke)
Contact form glitch. Kara will put a message in the newsletter letting members know that there was a glitch on form.

IMIYA logo – The Board is looking for the full resolution file.
Next meeting date – March 8, 2026.

“By learning to appreciate breath, we learn to appreciate life itself. The gift of breath is the gift of life. When we receive a gift, we feel gratitude. Through pranayama we learn gratitude for life and gratitude toward the unknown divine source of life.” BKS Iyengar