The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga

J. Miles joins Jivana this week to discuss what it means "to go through the fire of life" as yoga practitioners and the importance of maintaining our practice as yoga teachers. Creator of Maha Vira Yoga, J has been dancing to the rhythm of life since childhood. A yoga practitioner, martial artist, bodyworker, retired breakdancer, community activist, and the son of a Baptist minister, J has been learning and studying Eastern arts and philosophy for nearly two decades. Over the years, he has crafted a style tempered by real life experience, humor, yogic philosophy, and the importance of breath as a guide and source of strength. He opens up about what it means to teach yoga and live as a Black man and how to maintain a feeling of joy and abundance despite various challenges in his life and community.

Jivana and J describe the theme of this episode as "spiritual practice as compost" and explain why cultivating good soil helps to cultivate a good life.
Learn more about J.
Follow J's journey on Instagram.
Contact J about trainings, private sessions, and more.

Learn more about Yoga Revolution by Jivana Heyman.

Order your copy of Yoga Revolution at Shambala, or wherever books are sold.

Also by Jivana Heyman:
Accessible Yoga: Poses & Practices for Every Body (2019, Shambala)
The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body (2024)
Connect with Jivana:www.jivanaheyman.com
@jivanaheyman
facebook.com/jivanaheyman
www.accessibleyogaschool.com
@accessibleyogaschool
facebook.com/accessibleyogaschool

This week's guest is Rane Bowen (he/him), a long-time student of yoga and meditation. He shares his personal journey with stomach cancer, how the practices helped him cope with the emotional difficulties of a terminal (mis)diagnosis, and how he's deepening his connection to his Maori heritage.

Rane has an insatiable curiosity about the yoga teachings and how they can help people in their daily lives and in overcoming adversity. Alongside his wife Jo Stewart, he teaches yoga at Garden of Yoga, a home-based yoga studio, and co-hosts the Flow Artists Podcast, which features teachers and thinkers about yoga, meditation, social justice, and more. Jivana and Rane discuss how the yoga teachings connect to death and how spirituality can help us address suffering and tap into a deeper level of compassion. The two also consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way we care for others and view freedom and collective care.

Take a class with Rane.
Follow Rane on Instagram.
Listen to the Flow Artists Podcast.

Learn more about Yoga Revolution by Jivana Heyman.

Order your copy of Yoga Revolution at Shambala, or wherever books are sold.

Also by Jivana Heyman:
Accessible Yoga: Poses & Practices for Every Body (2019, Shambala)
The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body (2024)
Connect with Jivana:www.jivanaheyman.com
@jivanaheyman
facebook.com/jivanaheyman
www.accessibleyogaschool.com
@accessibleyogaschool
facebook.com/accessibleyogaschool

This week Jivana shares a heartfelt conversation about yoga service with teacher Adrian Molina.

Adrian has been teaching yoga since 2004 and has an extensive worldwide following through his platform and school of yoga, Warrior Flow. Even with his wide-ranging reach, Adrian remains humble, warm, and dedicated to using the tools and practices of yoga to benefit others. He is also a writer, meditation teacher, sound therapist, End-of-Life Doula, Mental Health First Aid facilitator, an ambassador for Accessible Yoga and Yoga for All, and soon to be a TCTSY facilitator. Adrian is recognized as a community organizer and founder of The Warrior Flow Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that brings the benefits of movement, therapeutic and accessible yoga, mindfulness, and stress reduction tools to schools, shelters, hospitals, police, first responders, and hospice care. He is also the co-founder of Warrior Flow TV, an online video platform that makes fitness and yoga accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Jivana and Adrian discuss what self care means in the context of yoga service, how teaching is also a form of self care, and why bringing yoga to unusual places, such as hospitals and police stations, combines spiritual practice and social justice and is, in many ways, the path to a true yoga revolution.

Learn more about Adrian and Warrior Flow.
Join Adrian's Instagram community.
Join the Warrior Flow Instagram community.

Learn more about Yoga Revolution by Jivana Heyman.

Order your copy of Yoga Revolution at Shambala, or wherever books are sold.

Also by Jivana Heyman:
Accessible Yoga: Poses & Practices for Every Body (2019, Shambala)
The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body (2024)
Connect with Jivana:www.jivanaheyman.com
@jivanaheyman
facebook.com/jivanaheyman
www.accessibleyogaschool.com
@accessibleyogaschool
facebook.com/accessibleyogaschool

This week Itzel Berrio Hayward joins Jivana Heyman for a warm and dynamic conversation about our innate divinity, finding unity in diversity, and the relationship between social justice and yoga. Itzel is a compassionate and fierce advocate for love. After serving as a public policy lawyer for 13 years, Itzel left her legal career and founded Attuned Living, a mindfulness and wellness organization that helps individuals heal the sense of separation they feel from others—or even from themselves. Her unique work—based on the teachings of yoga, mindfulness, and compassionate communication—ranges from promoting social justice work within organizations and communities to guiding individuals on their search for personal and professional fulfillment.

During their heartfelt chat, Jivana and Itzel consider the following: How is our spirituality connected to our humanity? How do we avoid making the yogic teachings overly dogmatic while still keeping the tradition alive? And, how can we connect those teachings to our modern-day, human experience for the benefit of all?
Learn more about Itzel and Attuned Living.
Follow Itzel on Instagram.

Learn more about Yoga Revolution by Jivana Heyman.

Order your copy of Yoga Revolution at Shambala, or wherever books are sold.

Also by Jivana Heyman:
Accessible Yoga: Poses & Practices for Every Body (2019, Shambala)
The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body (2024)
Connect with Jivana:www.jivanaheyman.com
@jivanaheyman
facebook.com/jivanaheyman
www.accessibleyogaschool.com
@accessibleyogaschool
facebook.com/accessibleyogaschool

In yoga culture, teachers are often placed up on pedestals, creating an unequal power dynamic. So, what happens when teachers get down from the pedestal and learn alongside the student? When teaching is approached as a practice, a collaborative and intuitive relationship with the student can be formed and opportunities for growth discovered.

Join Jivana Heyman and this episode’s guest, Michelle Cassandra Johnson, as they unravel the intricate layers of teaching yoga as a practice. Together they reflect on the role of wonder and curiosity in teaching, self-trust, and the value of sharing the sacred practice in community.

Topics include:

1. Countering dominant culture’s power hierarchies
2. Cultivating humility and learning from mistakes
3. Intuition in teaching
4. Advice to new teachers
5. Trust, faith, and spiritual practice
6. Communing and building community
7. Incorporating humor

Check out Jivana’s new book, The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga, and get more information about the book on his website.

Connect with Jivana:

www.jivanaheyman.com | @jivanaheyman | facebook.com/jivanaheyman

Michelle Cassandra Johnson (she/her) is an author, activist, spiritual teacher and practitioner, racial equity consultant and trainer, and intuitive healer. Michelle teaches workshops and immersions and leads retreats and transformative experiences nationwide the focus on exploring embodied approaches to racial equity work, creating ritual in justice spaces, our divine connection with nature and Spirit, and how we as a culture can heal. Michelle is the author of Skill in Action, Finding Refuge, We Heal Together, published by Shambhala Publications, and A Space For Us, published by Beacon Press.

Connect with Michelle:

www.michellecjohnson.com | @skillinaction