We converse with Jivana Heyman to study extra about his background and keenness for accessible yoga. Study extra about Jivana’s follow in his e book Yoga Revolution: Constructing a Observe of Braveness & Compassion.
Inform us a bit about your self…
I’m a yoga instructor and yoga therapist, and I like to demystify the yoga teachings and present folks that everybody can use the practices of yoga to seek out extra peace of their lives. Accessible Yoga is the group I based over a decade in the past, and our group is devoted to welcoming everybody into the follow. I stay in Santa Barbara, California with my husband and now we have two grown kids who nonetheless want a variety of assist. I really like educating yoga and writing about it. Actually, I simply revealed a brand new e book, The Instructor’s Information to Accessible Yoga: Greatest Practices for Sharing Yoga with Each Physique.
What does a typical day appear to be for you?
I begin by making breakfast for my husband, after which I am going sit for meditation. I often do some educating on-line and reply emails. Then I am going for a motorbike trip to the seaside and go for lengthy walks on the lookout for sea glass. I often do some asanas later within the afternoon. Educating yoga in any format makes me glad. That features creating posts and reels for social media or writing about it. I additionally love working with my group, employees, board members, volunteers and anybody who’s fascinated by making yoga accessible.
How did your yoga journey start and what impressed you to grow to be a yoga instructor?
My grandmother taught me yoga once I was a younger youngster. She was practising yoga within the Nineteen Sixties in LA and impressed me by way of her dedication. Then, within the Eighties I got here out of the closet as a homosexual man and have become an AIDS activist when my group was dealing with the AIDS epidemic. At the moment, I went again to yoga to handle burnout and the deep grief I used to be experiencing as my pals had been getting sick and dying. I lastly grew to become a yoga instructor in 1990 so I might share yoga with my group of individuals with HIV and AIDS.
What impressed you to concentrate on your follow?
As I began educating yoga for folks with HIV and AIDS, my college students confirmed me what they wanted. Accessible Yoga was born from their knowledge and generosity. Over time, I inspired a lot of them to grow to be academics themselves, and my instructor coaching packages had been created for them. In 2015, I organized the primary Accessible Yoga Convention in Santa Barbara, California, and since then I’ve targeted a variety of vitality on serving to to assist different yoga academics who’re working on this space.
How have you ever seen yoga profit your college students?
There’s nothing extra compelling than educating yoga and seeing the best way it transforms folks’s lives. Yoga affords a pathway again to ourselves. It doesn’t precisely give us peace, however it removes the obstacles to us experiencing the peace that’s our important nature. Yoga affords strategies for decreasing our struggling, and for that I might be eternally grateful.
What’s your favourite quote or life motto?
That’s a tough query as a result of I flip to the yoga teachings every day for inspiration and to assist me in dwelling a peaceable serviceful life. One among my favourite teachings is from the Chandogya Upanishad, which is roughly 2,500 years previous:
The little house throughout the coronary heart is as nice as this huge universe.
The heavens and the earth are there, and the solar, and the moon,
and the celebrities; fireplace and lightning and winds are there; and all that
now could be and all that’s not: for the entire universe is in It and It
dwells inside our coronary heart
What’s developing for you in 2024?
I really like seeing the ways in which Accessible Yoga is rising all over the world, and I’m excited to get again to in individual educating. For the primary time in years, I might be main just a few Accessible Yoga Trainings in individual, together with packages in Italy on the finish of April and in London in early Could! I’m additionally engaged on my fourth e book, which makes me very glad.
