Sharing Love

Huntington-Grown Yogi Launches ShareLove.Fund Organization to Empower Women

By LILY TINOCO | Reporter

Former Palisadian Ashley Share is on a mission to help as many women as possible, recently launching the ShareLove.Fund to provide free yoga teacher certification programs to women in need.

The charitable endeavor aims to empower women—specifically at-risk youth, homeless, unemployed or previously incarcerated women—through the teachings of yoga.

“By immersing these women in an intense Yoga Alliance-approved 200-hour course, we provide more than a teaching certificate and gainful employment,” according to the organization’s website, “we are recalibrating these women to optimize their mind, body and soul.”

To date, the group has helped more than 1,000 women between the ages of 16 and 60.

Share, who currently resides in New York, said her passion roots from the lessons she learned growing up in Pacific Palisades—from lessons of global citizenship at Harvard-Westlake School to her mother and father teaching her about helping and educating others.

She launched ShareLove.Fund in December 2020 after noticing the effects of COVID-19 on individuals after schools were shut down.

“I thought, ‘What has helped me? What has really empowered me as a woman?’” Share said to the Palisadian-Post. “This yoga teaching degree, it really just made me feel more in control and [helped me] make better decisions. I have a skill and I can give them a teaching credential and take them through this process of earning the credential, which is really empowering.”

And so Share selected yoga as an empowerment tool for women.

“Particularly women, I feel like … were raised to be people-pleasers,” she explained. “When you teach a class, everybody’s silent and you give the commands, you’re in control in a really calm way. I feel like that is so empowering.”

Share also said it opens the prospect of pursuing a career as a yoga instructor if needed: A teenage girl who lives with her grandma and has been isolated due to the pandemic has been given the opportunity to become one of the youngest certified and credentialed yoga instructors as she completes her training and gets her certification on her birthday.

Share said launching her own organization has also helped her feel equally empowered.

“I’ve never started my own business before and I have no experience with small businesses,” she said, adding that she worked as a lawyer before. “It’s been awesome. For me, it’s all been silver linings because you don’t realize what you’re capable of until you start just acting from your heart.”

With resources currently limited, ShareLove.Fund offers paid classes as a source of funding. She said the free program is for people who need a yoga degree to change their lives—not necessarily financially.

“Our logo is a lotus flower because it is a beautiful flower but it literally grows out of the mud,” Share said. “When you’re in the mud, you can still grow into something beautiful.”

She grew up in the Huntington, where her parents still reside. She was first featured in the Post over 20 years ago when she played a harp solo in the 1996 Palisades Talent Pageant, her first “claim to fame.” Share said her dream is to have a yoga studio one day.

“We’d love to grow and be bi-coastal, if we could be everywhere that would be great,” Share said. “I would love to see this grow to take women at whatever stage they’re at and bring them up like 10 more notches.”

For more information, visit sharelove.fund.