Accessible Yoga School Blog
8 Yoga Teachers Who Focus on Neurodiversity & Mental Health
Earlier this year Accessible Yoga launched an incredible virtual workshop series, Neurodiversity, Mental Health & Yoga: Cultivating Welcoming Practices & Communities. This is such an important topic, ...
Watch Now: Skills for Adapting Popular Yoga Poses with Jivana Heyman
We sometimes forget that yoga is a spiritual practice that's mostly about working with the mind. When I share this with my students, it often surprises them to consider that yoga is a mental practice....
Rainbow Mind Meditation for Pride (and Every Day)
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"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognise, accept, and celebrate those differences." —Audre Lorde Â
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When I came out of the closet in 1984, I had no idea there ...
Embracing Difference, Not Conformity: What Does Accessible Yoga Really Mean?
by Jivana Heyman
I’m always curious about the ways that the term “accessible yoga” is understood and translated by the yoga community. What I’ve noticed recently is that some yoga teachers talk about...
Tradition Versus Innovation in Asana
by Jivana Heyman
Most people think that adapting yoga is a very contemporary thing to do, and sometimes I hear concerns that something is lost when we adapt the practice. But it is possible to find e...
A Technique to Teach Truly Mixed Level Yoga Classes
by Jivana Heyman
As yoga teachers, we need to help our students find safe and effective ways to practice whether it’s online or in person. One of the most helpful ways of doing this is to offer many ...
6 Tips for Yoga Teachers Moving Towards Accessibility
By Jivana Heyman
I’ve had so many people tell me, “I’m not flexible enough to do yoga.” Of course, flexibility doesn’t really have anything to do with yoga! So hearing this over and over can be incre...
3 Trauma-Informed Breathing Cues
by Jivana Heyman
We can make our pranayama practices more accessible through a better understanding of the breath. Here, three trauma-informed breathing cues to inform your teaching.
1. Bigger isn’t...
Here's the poem I return to when thinking about the breath
by Jivana Heyman
Here’s a poem I often return to when thinking about the breath. Kabir clarifies the importance of the breath in spiritual practice, answering the timeless question, “What is God?” He...
Breathing Through the Kleysa
by Jivana Heyman
In one of the most poetic passages of his Yoga Sutras, Patanjali explains that pranayama, the breathing practices, allow our inner light, or spirit, to shine. He says, “As a result [...
