Our mission is to make yoga, dance, and gymnastics accessible to individuals in the Greater New York City Area. Our vision is an inclusive world of empowered individuals with strong minds, bodies, and spirits connected to the global community.

Founder Paul “Keoni” Chun’s middle name is a fitting one. In Hawaiian the word means “a quality of movement that is gentle, steadfast, and soothing.” Keoni Movement Arts (KMA) imbues its programs with these qualities, as it shares joy through the movement arts of Yoga, Dance, and Gymnastics (Yo-Dan-Nastics). 

Paul founded KMA in 2008, and the organization began offering programming in 2012. Paul has deep experience with each of the three movement arts behind Yo-Dan-Nastics. In high school and college, he was a competitive gymnast, in his early adult life, he danced professionally, and over the last 20 years, both as a practitioner and a professional teacher, yoga has been one of his major passions. 

Paul’s life has been transformed and enriched blissfully by all three activities. His goal with KMA is to create a web of mutuality amongst these three complementary movement arts and to see people’s lives uplifted through their participation in these bliss-inducing activities.

A primary goal of KMA is to provide its NYC community with a place where people with limited means and encouragement can learn these movement art forms in an affordable way. In particular, gymnastics instruction can be quite expensive and therefore out of reach to many. The organization strives to create an infrastructure and a nurturing environment to facilitate safe participation in gymnastics — alongside dance and yoga — to meet this need. In Paul’s experience, yoga and dance facilitate the learning of gymnastics in a safe and harmonious manner, and is another reason why these three movement modalities work so well when taught together.

Having been born and raised in Hawaii, Paul — a.k.a. Teacher Paul — envisions spreading the Spirit of Aloha — the spirit of love, compassion, and mutual understanding — through KMA’s programs. He understands the special place Hawaii and Hawaiian cultural values holds in helping the world to heal, transform, and unify. When we say “Aloha Calls” we are saying that Love is calling all of us to know and realize our highest possibilities for the betterment of the whole planet.