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Why did someone launch a Kickstarter to make a toy called Yoga Joes?

Answer: to encourage military veterans with PTSD to take up yoga

Some research indicates that sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can experience reduced symptoms one year later after taking up yoga.

The granola-scented stigma surrounding yoga culture, however, does not mesh well with military culture. “It’s for women in spandex. It’s for pretzel bodies. You have to be a vegetarian. You have to be a hippie,” Sarah Kessler wrote for Fast Company. “These were the sorts of responses that Robin Carnes got […] during her six years of work at an acute PTSD treatment program in Walter Reed Army Medical Center.”

Yoga fan Dan Abramson launched a Kickstarter campaign, now just over half funded with 10 days to go, to help change that conception.