More: Season for Sharing's legacy of giving continues this year, thanks to donors ‘We’re just volunteers showing up … to service the community’ You feel more balanced instead of being so caught up in worldly stuff.” “You get connected with the other elements around us: the trees, the plants and things like that. “I've made nature, natural nature, my health forever,” she said. She is committed to helping people get grounded, whether that’s by practicing yoga in the garden or planting trees at Spaces of Opportunity. Pettis now lives full-time in Phoenix and spends most of her days outside. “And it's shifted, you know, from being inside of the gym and an arena to outside in the sun and reconnecting and getting in the community, meeting strangers - or so-called (strangers) - just meeting our community, meeting humans and not feeling that separation anymore.” I had left a life that I've always known,” Pettis said. Within a year of starting Project Roots, Pettis stepped down as an assistant coach for the Chicago Sky. “So here we are in year three, and I tell you, we're closer than ever.” (Project Roots) was bigger than us, and we knew that no matter what our relationship was, that we had to continue this nonprofit,” Washington said. “We got so much fulfillment from feeding our community. The desire to reconnect with people and nature led to her founding Project Roots in 2019 with Executive Director Dionne Washington, with whom she is raising three teenagers. But training in gyms and playing inside arenas had left her disconnected from the outdoors and her community. Learn about Project Roots: The nonprofit teaches kids how to grow food in Phoenix Bridget Pettis’ journey from WNBA to gardeningĪs a professional basketball player who played six seasons with the Phoenix Mercury and two with the Indiana Fever, Pettis was physically healthy. Her definition of wellness includes "getting us back together, feeling more comfortable and whole and happy again with each other,” she said. “That's important that we learn how to love each other again and bring health and wellness to us,” Pettis said. Pettis, 51, is the co-founder of the nonprofit, which “seeks to provide and promote a healthier, natural and more sustainable way of living in urban areas where there is a need,” according to its website.įor Pettis, promoting healthier living in Phoenix - and especially "my Black community," she said - on this particular morning meant practicing yoga “to feel the experience of being a human." This yoga session is part of Project Roots’ yoga wellness collective, which hosts free classes at the garden on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. A volunteer was shoveling in the garden nearby as Asia Smith led five people through a yoga flow at Spaces of Opportunity, a community garden in south Phoenix run by an organization called Project Roots. A garbage truck rolled along the residential street, and a rooster let out an occasional crow. Twenty minutes into a nearly hour-long outdoor yoga class, former WNBA player-turned-assistant coach Bridget Pettis exclaimed from her mat that she felt so good that she will “live until I’m 1,000!” View Gallery: WNBA's Bridget Pettis brings gardening, yoga to south Phoenix: Photos
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