Accessible Yoga Podcast

The Trans Yoga Project is a collaborative effort supporting Trans* people's spiritual wellness through community (re)education, advocacy within the yoga and wellIn Episode 22 Jivana Heyman welcomes M Camellia and Puja Singh Titchkosky to learn more about the mission of the Trans Yoga Project.ness industries, community building, and creating guided practices by and for Trans* and non-binary people. M and Puja share deeply about how their collective began their work together and how the shared values of the groups have led to this new project. M and Puja talk about the subtle and overt ways that assumptions and language can make yoga spaces feel unwelcoming, unsafe, and inaccessible. This rich conversation invites us all to investigate how we may be creating harm and inaccessibility for Trans and Non-Binary folks and reminds us of the responsibility we each have to shift, learn and advocate.  

This week we explore:

• How the Trans Yoga Project is cultivating spaces that allow Trans folks to thrive and find access to safe yoga and healing spaces
• How collaboration created this new project and leads how they work together
• How language can make yoga and wellness spaces harmful to Trans folks
• How making assumptions about our students leads to misgendering and other harmful experiences
• How the layers of assumptions, social conditioning and discrimination make yog and wellness spaces inaccessible 
• The importance of developing a practice of using and respecting pronouns; yours, others and strangers
• The importance of examining the unnecessary practice of gendering that happens in our yoga spaces (for ex. Bathrooms, changing rooms, pose cueing)
• The importance of investigating and engaging gender in our own experience
• How M leaned into investigating the stories of gender and got a grounded understanding of herself
• The importance of understanding the expansiveness of gender as a step towards understanding and inclusivity 

This week’s question: 

How are you creating space for gender exploration?

In Episode 21 Amber Karnes welcomes Francesca Cervero, private yoga teacher and teacher’s mentor. Francesca gives insight into how she built her career and offerings as a teacher and mentor. Amber and Francesca discuss the ways we build trust, depth and understanding for ourselves and our students on the journey of self discovery using the tools of this practice. This conversation holds space for us to examine the ways teachers can empower and educate our students in group and private yoga and wellness spaces. 

This week we explore:

• How Francesca grew her teaching practice and business
• How Francesca started mentoring other teachers
• How Francesa created her podcast 
• How students and teachers can benefit from ongoing private sessions
• How supporting students can expand our perspectives as teachers
• How to build a supportive teaching practice to best serve your students
• How to build a trusting bond with students
• The importance of inquiry vs aesthetics in teaching physical posture 
• How to re-imagine progress for ourselves and our students 
• How to empower and educate students beyond the physical accomplishments often attached to this practice in current yoga culture. 
• The importance of observing students during practice, instead of practicing alongside them 
• How Francesca shifted to virtual teaching in response to COVID-19 and how it has impacted/shifted her offerings

In Episode 20 Amber Karnes and Jivana Heyman sit to talk about chair yoga and how it can be used as a tool to democratize asana practice. We begin with a conversation about how lineage and “guru culture” are shifting as abuse is being revealed. Jivana and Amber also talk about the way dominant culture conflates health and wellness as a basis for a human being’s worth and value. They each share about the ways that this belief keeps folks from understanding the potential of chair yoga and creates more ableism in our yoga spaces. The conversation also talks in depth about how chair yoga can be used to serve folks in diverse bodies who have different needs from the physical practice.

This week we explore:

• How the end of “Guru culture” through the revealing of ongoing abuse is shifting yoga culture
• How we continue to have a collective focus on extreme physical asana 
• How Amber thinks about her learning lineage in yoga
• How Jivana thinks about his Guru and lineage
• How toxic diet culture and dominant culture have influenced who we see as an expert or “yoga celebrity” 
• How props like chairs are still seen as less than in mainstream yoga spaces
• How we uphold health as the basis for value in others, on and off of the mat
• How the sutras talk about our care, feelings and thought about our bodies
• The importance of creating right relationship with our body and spirit through acceptance
• How to easy use a chair to make the other limbs of the practice accessible to anyone
• How the chair can be used as a prop to support postures, making them more accessible

This week’s question: 

What is the right relationship with your body?

In Episode 19 Amber Karnes sits down with Pamela Stokes-Eggleston. Pamela is a published author, stress management consultant, wellness resilience expert, national speaker, and sleep wellness coach. She founded Yoga2Sleep due to her challenges with insomnia and secondary post-traumatic stress. Pamela goes into deep detail about how her own life experiences led her to focus on the connections between yoga, sleep, and supporting veterans and their families. Pamela shares about the importance of tapping into what she calls “tiny bits of joy.” Join Amber and Pamela for this conversation that invites us to each use this practice to serve others. 

This week we explore:

• How Pamela created Yoga 2 Sleep and came to this work from her own experience with sleep disorders
• The importance of sleep for our overall wellness and ability to navigate stress
• How common it is for folks to navigate sleep disorders
• How Pamela came to focus on working with veterans
• How Pamela’s experience as a military spouse brought her back to her yoga practice and led to her being a teacher
• How Pamela saw yoga serving veterans and their families 
• How working with veterans taught Pamela about the needs of caregivers and families of wounded veterans
• How we can build small practices into our daily lives to support our stress and responsibilities
• How this practice holds the space to embody resilience and strength in a sustainable way
• The question, “What are you prepared to do?”

In Episode 18 Amber Karnes sits down to chat with Kimberly Dark, a writer, professor and teacher who works to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life so that we can reclaim our power as social creators. Amber and Kimberly talk about the bias present in us all and how to begin unpacking the biases we hold that do harm, especially in regards to bodies and their variations.  Kimberly shares the importance of being open to discomfort as a gateway to embodied learning and culture shifting. Kimberly also talks richly about the ways we can honor our lived experiences and the fullness of who we are. This candid conversation between Amber and Kimberley invites us all to lean heavily into our own discomfort in the service of creating a better world. 

This week hear more about:

• How Amber and Kimberly met at a retreat Kimberly offers
• The importance of learning to accept the presence of bias 
• The power of unpacking the cultural biases that dehumanize us all
• How healing spaces can ignore the intersections of identity, bias and accessibility
• The importance of unpacking the systems of oppression in our lived experiences
• How to navigate call-ins and critiques of our work with self study and clarity
• The invitations available in Kimberly’s new book “Fat, Pretty and Soon To Be Old” 
• How we as teachers can learn from the students who show up in our classes
• How social change happens over time and not in one moment
• How the idea of resilience has been commodified and warped
• How we model humanity for others, like our children and the importance of honoring all of who we are and what we experience
• Exploring the question “How do you rest?”

In episode 17, Jivana Heyman welcomes Lakshmi Nair. Lakshmi Nair is the founder of Satya Yoga Co-op, a BIPOC owned and operated yoga cooperative in Denver, Colorado. Satya Yoga Co-op grew out of a yoga immersion and teacher training for Black & Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) that Lakshmi has been offering in Denver since 2014. In this interview we learn more about Lakshmi’s journey back to her practice and the creation of this transformative yoga co-op. Lakshmi and Jivana discover that they have been in the same yoga spaces since the late 90s. The exchange between Lakshmi and Jivana gives insight into building sustainable models to make this practice available, accessible and welcoming for all. 

This week hear more about:

• How Lakshmi began her work supporting BIPoC in wellness and yoga spaces
• How growing up in Denver as a POC disconnected her from yoga
• How living in a more diverse environment provided pathways to healing
• How yoga was introduced to her as a teen by her father
• How Lakshmi returned to the practice as an adult
• Why Lakshmi designed her Trainings with the intention of making it accessible to as many BIPoC folks
• How the Co-op was created from her desire to support the teachers she was training, instead of sending them into a yoga industry that undervalued them
• What she learned from other co-ops in her area when creating her Co-op
• How theCo-Operative is navigating the ramifications Covid-19
• How the city of Denver is working to tackle equity and access to wellness and yoga
• How working in collaboration is an important part of making yoga accessible in a sustainable way

Episode 16 is the second in a series about making yoga asana accessible for all bodies. In this episode, Amber and Jivana talk about the language we use as yoga teachers. Jivana shares what the yoga Sutras say about the role of asana in our practice and we talk in-depth about investigating and shifting the language we use to communicate in our teaching spaces. Amber talks briefly about her recent Yoga Journal cover issue, including the history of harm the publication has had in yoga and wellness, and the importance of holding these large organizations accountable. This conversation is a rich exchange about the way our words can create belonging and affirm our students or our words can uphold systems of oppression and perpetuate a yoga practice that is inaccessible to most. 

• How Amber feels about her recently released Yoga Journal Cover and the history of harm the publication has had in yoga and wellness.
• How the Sutras talk about the physical asana
• The focus of western yoga culture to center the physical aspects of the practice while ignoring the other parts
• How being in inquiry within the body empowers us to going into deeper inquiry around our thoughts and feelings
• How the phrase “full expression of the pose” creates a hierarchy in our yoga classes
• The importance of investing the language we use to teach this practice
• The importance of understanding the stories people are holding about using props
• How we unlearn ableism within our practice spaces and community 
• How teaching the foundations and intentions of each pose removes hierarchy of physical ability 
• The importance of giving our students agency and using language that empowers them, honors consent and welcomes folks to honor the bodies they have

In episode 15, Jivana Heyman welcomes Hala Khouri, yoga teacher and co-founder of Off The Mat Into The World. Hala shares openly about how her own life and experiences led her to the work she does as an activist. She also gives insight into the beginnings of Off The Mat and how the organization came to be. In this conversation Jivana and Hala talk openly about how they are each navigating the political climate within yoga spaces. This conversations invites us all to reconnect the roots of yoga to social activism.

In this episode we learn more about:

• How parenting, politics and the pandemic are showing up in her life during these times
• How Hala came in activism and community organizing
• Hala’s story of leaving Lebanon as a child because of war
• How Off The Mat was created
• The importance of grassroots organizing
• How Hala came out with a strong stance against Q-Anon
• How individualism in wellness is holding space for right wing ideology in wellness communities
• How yoga has been disconnected from its historical roots of social justice and activism
• How to lean into to the connection between yoga, social justice and our individual action 

In Episode 14, Jivana Heyman sits down with De Jur Jones, a yoga teacher, flight attendant, community advocate, and model. De Jur has worked as a model for Accessible Yoga and is the main model used in Jivana’s recent book, Accessible Yoga: Poses and Practices for Every Body. De Jur shares about the populations she serves, including incarcerated communities, folks who were formerly sex trafficked, and those facing housing instability. De Jur also shares about her work as a trauma-informed yoga teacher and community support member and how she brings intention to her offerings to support the humans in front of her. De Jur speaks in depth about the many types of trauma that we do not regularly consider or choose to ignore. This conversation invites us to consider the trauma in our experience while holding the awareness that everyone around you also has trauma.

In this episode we learn more about:

• The work De Jur does in her community with yoga 
• How the pandemic has shifted her ability to serve
• How the pandemic has isolated and limited services to these underserved communities
• The increased risk for COVID-19 for folks who are incarcerated and the concern De Jur has for them 
• What trauma informed yoga looks like when serving folks in highly traumatized environments like prisons
• How De Jur brings intention to her physical cueing and poses to honor the trauma present in her students experiences
• How trauma shows up in ways we may not regularly consider
• How the impact of generational, race based trauma is always impacting BIPoC
• How the wildfires in California are creating trauma for those who are most marginalized
• How mandatory mask use has created tension and escalated situations with passengers who are refusing to comply
• How De Jur is practicing self care in the midst of all the current unfoldings
• Deeper understanding of what triggers and activations are and how they show up every day
• How the tools of yoga can support us when we experience triggers or activations
• How the breath can support us as an ever present way to self regulate

In Episode 13, Jivana Heyman interviews Amber Karnes about her upcoming course, Making Peace With Your Body. Amber shares openly about why she chose to do this work and how this work is intertwined in her own experience as a fat person. This conversation talks about the toxic nature of diet culture, the harm inflicted on folks in larger bodies within the medical industrial complex, and the ways dominant culture devalues folks in bigger bodies. Amber shares about how we can divest ourselves from diet culture and lean into our personal power, and what body image work has to do with social justice.

In this episode we dig in about:

• Why Amber began this work
• How Amber came to identify as fat
• How the medical industrial complex treats folks in larger bodies
• How diet culture shapes our wellness and yoga spaces. 
• How we systems of oppression influence dieet culture and our widely held beauty standards
• How we each hold a hierarchy of bodies that devalue those in bigger bodies
• How all of the devaluation of larger bodies trickles down to influence the distribution of resources 
• How fatphobia shows up in the decisions we make about food, dieting and wellness
• How much time and energy we put into trying to fix ourselves and fit into beauty standards
• How we can lean out of toxic diet culture and reclaim our personal power
• How we can heal the relationship we have with ourselves
• How disrupting toxic diet culture is a part of dismantling white supremacy and other systems of oppression 
• How Amber’s new course will work and what to expect

Today’s inquiry

Each week we’ll leave you with a powerful question. We encourage you to sit in inquiry with this question, write about it, discuss it with another community member on this path. Today, we invite you to reflect on this question:

What would you do with all the resources (money, energy, time, etc.) that you have spent on trying to fix yourself and your body if you could get it back?