We communicate with Jivana Heyman to be taught extra about his background and fervour for accessible yoga. Be taught extra about Jivana’s follow in his ebook Yoga Revolution: Constructing a Follow 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 neighborhood is devoted to welcoming everybody into the follow. I stay in Santa Barbara, California with my husband and we now have two grown youngsters who nonetheless want lots of assist. I really like educating yoga and writing about it. In truth, I simply printed a brand new ebook, The Trainer’s Information to Accessible Yoga: Finest 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 seashore and go for lengthy walks in search of sea glass. I often do some asanas later within the afternoon. Educating yoga in any format makes me blissful. That features creating posts and reels for social media or writing about it. I additionally love working with my neighborhood, workers, board members, volunteers and anybody who’s fascinated with making yoga accessible.
How did your yoga journey start and what impressed you to turn into a yoga instructor?
My grandmother taught me yoga once I was a younger baby. She was practising yoga within the 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 neighborhood was going through the AIDS epidemic. At the moment, I went again to yoga to deal with burnout and the deep grief I used to be experiencing as my buddies have been getting sick and dying. I lastly turned a yoga instructor in 1990 so I may share yoga with my neighborhood of individuals with HIV and AIDS.
What impressed you to specialise in 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. Through the years, I inspired a lot of them to turn into academics themselves, and my instructor coaching packages have been created for them. In 2015, I organized the primary Accessible Yoga Convention in Santa Barbara, California, and since then I’ve targeted lots of power 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 may be nothing extra compelling than educating yoga and seeing the best way it transforms folks’s lives. Yoga provides 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 provides methods for lowering our struggling, and for that I shall 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 each day for inspiration and to assist me in dwelling a peaceable serviceful life. One in all my favourite teachings is from the Chandogya Upanishad, which is roughly 2,500 years outdated:
The little area 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 celebs; fireplace and lightning and winds are there; and all that
now’s and all that isn’t: 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 shall 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 Might! I’m additionally engaged on my fourth ebook, which makes me very blissful.
