We communicate with Jivana Heyman to study extra about his background and fervour for accessible yoga. Be taught extra about Jivana’s apply in his guide 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 group is devoted to welcoming everybody into the apply. I dwell in Santa Barbara, California with my husband and we’ve two grown youngsters who nonetheless want numerous assist. I really like instructing yoga and writing about it. In actual fact, I simply revealed a brand new guide, The Trainer’s Information to Accessible Yoga: Finest Practices for Sharing Yoga with Each Physique.
What does a typical day seem like for you?
I begin by making breakfast for my husband, after which I’m going sit for meditation. I often do some instructing on-line and reply emails. Then I’m going for a motorcycle journey to the seashore and go for lengthy walks searching for 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 group, employees, board members, volunteers and anybody who’s curious about making yoga accessible.
How did your yoga journey start and what impressed you to change into a yoga instructor?
My grandmother taught me yoga after I was a younger little one. She was training yoga within the Sixties in LA and impressed me by way of her dedication. Then, within the Nineteen 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 buddies have 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 apply?
As I began instructing 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 change into lecturers 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 centered numerous power on serving to to assist different yoga lecturers who’re working on this space.
How have you ever seen yoga profit your college students?
There may be nothing extra compelling than instructing 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, nevertheless it removes the obstacles to us experiencing the peace that’s our important nature. Yoga provides methods for decreasing 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 every day for inspiration and to assist me in dwelling a peaceable serviceful life. One in every of my favourite teachings is from the Chandogya Upanishad, which is roughly 2,500 years outdated:
The little house inside 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 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 particular person instructing. For the primary time in years, I shall be main a number of Accessible Yoga Trainings in particular person, together with packages in Italy on the finish of April and in London in early Might! I’m additionally engaged on my fourth guide, which makes me very blissful.
