Jivana Heyman 0:20
Hello there. Welcome to the Accessible Yoga Podcast. I'm Jivana Heyman. My pronouns are he and him, and I'm joining you from Chumash land, Santa Barbara, California, and I'm so grateful that you're here with me for this new adventure. This is the first episode of a new season of the podcast, and I'm really excited about it. Well, what happened was, I was trying to think of a way to celebrate this year, which is the 30th anniversary of me teaching yoga. And that's been a really, really long time, and honestly, the only thing that came to my mind was talking to other yoga teachers about it, and that's what I'm doing. So this whole podcast season is based on this idea of having conversations with other yoga practitioners and teachers who are really dedicated to living yoga, practicing yoga, and sharing yoga, and mostly I just want to reflect with them on what have we learned through the time we've spent in our practice and through our teaching? And I guess I just really want to explore that myself. I find that I really like talking to other yoga people and yoga teachers and every time I do, I learn something about myself. And I guess what I'm trying to do here is really get get back to what did I learn over all these years, three decades of practice and teaching?
Jivana Heyman 1:53
You know, it's kind of overwhelming. I feel like so much has happened over that time. I almost don't know where to start. And so I'm hoping these conversations, will be kind of like a, I don't know, a support for me during this journey. So I'm going to ask each guest to kind of journey back with me a little bit and share a little piece of their personal journey, right? To give an example of a story or a teaching that they've held on to from their past that has influenced the way they practice or teach or think about themselves today and moving forward on their journey. In fact, I'm going to be asking each of them that question, you know? What is it? You know, what is it that you found in this journey that has really stuck with you, and I'm going to share also a little bit about me. So the exact question is going to be this, what's a story, teaching, or practice from your past that continues to inspire you as you move forward on your path of yoga? And I'm going to ask each guest that question, and I'm also going to ask it of you. You my listener. I want to know what's a story, teaching or practice, from your past that continues to inspire you as you move forward on your path of yoga? And I'd love for you to share that with me.
Jivana Heyman 3:20
I've actually created two ways for you to respond. I mean, you can you can respond just in your mind, if you want. You don't have to share it with me, but I'd love to make this interactive. And so in the show notes for each podcast episode, and also on the landing page on our website at accessibleyoga.org, they will be two different forms. One is, well one is a form, like a Google form, that you can fill out and offer some written response, if you want. You could share your story, or teaching, or practice from your past that continues to inspire you, or you could just share a comment or a question. I love questions, by the way. We've also created this other way for you to leave a voice message. So there's also a link to a software program where you can just click a button and record a voice message that will be sent to me. And those, I would love to get your permission to share them on the air. I'm hoping to actually play those on the air, if possible, and to respond to them.
Jivana Heyman 4:27
So basically, the format for this podcast is as follows. I'm going to start each episode with kind of like a check in and see how we're doing, and then I'll share an interview. I'll get to speak to a special guest, someone who I just really want to talk to. And I'm making a list right now. The list is so darn long, I have like 60 names on there ready, and I can only talk to 30 people. At least, that's the current plan. So I'm trying to, like, cut it back a little bit. So I'll try to keep that conversation to about 30 minutes, right? 30 years, 30 people, 30 minutes. 30 by 30 by 30. Get to explore some of our history with them and their history, and then I'm gonna have the last part of each episode will be a time for feedback and my friend and support staff person, Deanna Michalopoulos, will be joining me for that last part to help me talk about what's going on in our, in my life and in her life, and also to respond to any comments or questions that we get. So that'll be a fun little short ending for each episode. And I'm really hoping this works. I hope we can make this interactive. So please, please leave a message or question, either written or a voice, whichever you prefer.
Jivana Heyman 5:53
All right. I also want to just take a moment talk about a little bit about my journey. I, you know, I've been teaching for 30 years. In fact, it was May 24th, 1995 when I graduated from my 200 hour teacher training. I'd actually already been training to teach for about four years before that, to be honest. But that's when I finally just decided, okay, I'm gonna go take a 200 hour. And I'm going to explore those stories more as we go through this season, but I've just been thinking, like generally, about these last 30 years, and mostly feeling grateful. I just want to express my gratitude for the yoga teachings and the people from South Asia that have kept these teachings alive for so many 1000s of years. You know, mostly we're talking about anonymous people. They're not necessarily names that we have access to or that have been recorded. I mean there's obviously some really famous yoga teachers and gurus from history that we still talk about, but I think there's so many who aren't well known, and maybe they were teachers, or maybe they were practitioners who handed the teachings down to their family and their communities and their friends. Maybe they didn't even consider themselves to be yoga teachers. Anyway, I just feel very grateful to everyone who's kept these teachings alive and how much it's meant to me and impacted my life and even really saved me.
Jivana Heyman 7:34
I just want to say that I, you know, I learned yoga when I was a child from my grandmother. She had a huge impact on me. She was a dedicated practitioner. She didn't consider herself a teacher, and yet, she taught me. She let me practice with her whenever she was with us, which was a lot when I was growing up and but then later, you know, I tell this story a lot, but I'm going to say it again, because here we are. You know, I was, I came out of the closet, let's see, I think it was 1984 when I was 17 years old. And you can do the math, I'm 57 years old now, and it was a middle of the AIDS epidemic. And being a gay man, you know, during that time, was scary and overwhelming and so many people I met were sick and dying, and it was just so intense. And so I really focused on trying to speak up for people with HIV and AIDS to have more attention, more funding, more support for them and their lives. And I feel like that was what my work was about. I worked with Act Up, mostly in San Francisco, in the 90s and it was amazing, but it also really burned me out. And so during that same time, I went back to yoga. I'd say it was in 1990 that I went back to yoga, just as a way of dealing with this time, with this stress of, I mean not just the stress of being in the middle of an AIDS epidemic, but just of being a young person, which is hard, I think, for all of us.
Jivana Heyman 9:22
And I was lucky to find a teacher, Kazuko Onodera, who really took me under her wing and taught me yoga. And I feel incredibly grateful to her and the time I got to spend with her. And then I ended up, she actually was a disciple of Swami Satchidananda and Integral Yoga, and I ended up becoming a disciple as well, and working for Integral Yoga for about 20 years. And I feel really grateful to all the people I met, so many incredible teachers who just had such a huge impact on me and all the amazing students I had during that time. You know, I basically decided to become a yoga teacher because I wanted to support the HIV and AIDS community, and that's what I did. So I finally took that 200 hour training in 1995 just so I could teach yoga to people with HIV and AIDS. And I started a class right away in the Castro in the hospital there, Davies Medical Center in Castro in San Francisco. And that class went on for, I don't even know, 12 years or something or more, and that's where Accessible Yoga was born. You know, those students really showed me what they needed, which was not only just that they needed an adapted practice, which was true, a lot of them needed to practice in the chair, but really they showed me that they wanted to get the heart of the teachings. And Accessible Yoga is really that, you know, how do we, how could I share or give access to the heart of yoga, which is really around the essential spiritual teachings that address issues of life and death, which is what my students were facing.
Jivana Heyman 10:59
And then, you know, my teaching basically expanded. From there, I invited people with different disabilities to join us. And, and then I, eventually I was teaching 200 hour trainings. It was basically like my full time job for Integral Yoga San Francisco. And I noticed that my students with disabilities weren't interested in taking the teacher training programs that I was offering, they didn't, well for a few reasons, they didn't see themselves as teachers, necessarily, and also, the trainings didn't feel accessible to them. And so the term Accessible Yoga started, I think it was around 2007 when I first offered it, 200 hour training for disabled students in Oakland, California, at Piedmont Yoga Studio. And actually got a grant from the Yoga Dana Foundation through Judith Lassiter and Richard Rosen, which I feel really grateful for. And I was inspired by my then student, Priya Wagner, who's continuing to be an amazing yoga teacher. Anyway, that was an incredible experience. I also want to mention Ian Waisler, who was assisting me and helping me through those years, and Matreiyi Picerno, who also assisted me, and so many others, so many incredible teachers who supported me and that project of making yoga accessible in those early days.
Jivana Heyman 12:22
And then I would say it was around 2015 when I moved to Southern California and felt really lost here and didn't know what to do. And so I got involved at the Santa Barbara Yoga Center, and, you know, decided, it's kind of a longer story I'll tell some time, but basically decided that I needed to create a place to bring together teachers who are working outside of mainstream yoga studios. And so we had our first Accessible Yoga Conference in 2015 here in Santa Barbara, and it was amazing and so many people came, and not a huge group, but like so many people who I loved and cared about, including Matthew Sanford, who really had a big impact on me. And when he said he was going to come to that conference, I was like, oh, wow, this is really happening, because he doesn't really travel. So that was really amazing. I feel very grateful to him and Ana Killingstat, who really made that happen. And again, so many other people, there's too many to name, but I'll just say, like it was a really beautiful experience to bring people together at a conference in person. Maybe some of you were there, and we continued to have conferences for years after that, really all over the world, we started having in person conferences, and that's where the Accessible Yoga nonprofit grew from. And then during COVID, it was really a challenge. We went online, but it didn't really work. And so the nonprofit, just this past year or last year, we really closed the nonprofit and merged all that programming back into the Accessible Yoga School, which all had started as one organization anyway, and just all come back into one home, Accessible Yoga.
Jivana Heyman 14:02
And so, I don't know, it just feels a lot more manageable now to me, because anyway, during all that time I was, you know, training yoga teachers, 200 hour trainings, and then also the Accessible Yoga Training in various formats, trying to support yoga teachers and making their classes accessible. And writing. I love writing. I used to write for Yoga Journal and Yoga International a lot and those articles helped me get the guts to put together a book. So I wrote my first book, Accessible Yoga that came out, I think 2019, I'm not so good with dates. And then my next book, Yoga Revolution, which is really, like, my favorite book, because it it really shares more on yoga philosophy and how to integrate yoga into our lives, and how revolutionary these teachings are. In that book, I talk about how yoga creates an inner revolution in terms of the way we relate to ourselves, that inner relationship is the key, I think, to yoga. But also in the way we then act in the world, and the way we treat other people. And then just last year, I published The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga, which came out of, you know, all the years I've been training yoga teachers, then I just wanted to kind of share everything with them that I've learned. And I love that book, too. I feel like that book is just a very practical guide to teaching yoga in an accessible way. And so I offer lots of tips and tools.
Jivana Heyman 15:36
And I'm working on a new book on making meditation accessible, and I'm very excited about that. I don't know when it's going to be published. But I'll let you know. Basically it's just, it's really focused on two things. One is looking at meditation from a yoga perspective, because yoga offers so many practical tools and techniques for accessing meditation, which is really at the heart of the teachings, you know, asana, pranayama, relaxation, yoga nidra. There's so many ways that we can get into meditation that are a little more easeful than seated, silent meditation. And then I also talk about techniques for adapting practices for people who've had trauma or neurodivergent folks, or people who just don't think meditation is for them, or are scared of it, or just don't like it. I have lots of ideas about that, so I hope that book comes out soon. I'll let you know.
Jivana Heyman 16:37
And yeah, just, I just want to say, to end here that again, I'm grateful to all the people who supported me along the way, all of my incredible students who really made Accessible Yoga and all the incredible staff, people I've worked with over the years. If I didn't name your name, I just want to say thank you, you know who you are. All the incredible guest teachers and presenters and donors and anyone who supported me, I just feel very grateful for your trust and support over all these years as well. That sounds like some kind of an acceptance speech, but I just want to say thank you. And thank you, listener. Thank you, whoever you are, for listening. And please respond and let me know. Let me know what you think. Let me know about if you have any questions, I'd love to answer them. Questions about me, or teaching yoga, or accessibility, or anything that comes to mind, and I'll try to answer them on the air as best I can. Yeah, so that's it, and hopefully I'll see you very soon for our next episode. All right, thanks a lot. Bye for now.
