Ali co-founded the Holistic Life Foundation in 2001, where he currently serves as Executive Director. He is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and graduate of the Friends School of Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a BS in Environmental Science and Policy with a Biodiversity specialization. He has over 12 years of experience teaching yoga and mindfulness to diverse populations.
Through his work at the Holistic Life Foundation he has helped develop and pilot yoga and mindfulness programs with at-risk youth, at drug treatment centers, juvenile detention centers, alternative high schools, mental crisis facilities, and in many other underserved communities, as well as a yoga and mindfulness instructor training program. For the past six years he has partnered with The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health and Penn State University’s Prevention Research Center on a federally funded randomized controlled trail in Baltimore City Public Schools, studying the effectiveness of yoga and mindfulness on urban youth.
Ali has authored a series of children’s books, and co-authored several yoga and mindfulness based curriculums, as well as developed numerous workshops and trainings. His work with the Holistic Life Foundation has been featured on Making a Difference on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, PBS, and in Mindful magazine, Yoga Journal, and the book A Mindful Nation by Congressman Tim Ryan.
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Aug 12 2015 Blog Post Mindful Moments: Holistic Life in Baltimore Mindfulness has officially gone mainstream. Oprah Winfrey, Congressman Tim Ryan, and even major corporations like Google are using mindfulness practices to help them shape the way they think about their lives and their business. But what exactly is it? Psychology Today characterizes mindfulness as “living in the moment and awakening to experience.” It is a […]