Accessible Yoga Podcast

Episode 12 is the first in a series about making asana accessible for all bodies. In part 1, Amber and Jivana dig into the ways physical practice is centered in western yoga culture. Jivana and Amber talk in detail about the other parts of the practice that often are ignored in most yoga and wellness spaces. We also talk about a simple mindset shift that prepares you for adapting almost any asana. This conversation invites us all to investigate the misconceptions we hold about changes in the physical body and how asana can support us through those changes. 

• How philosophy calls for making the practice accessible
• How physical practice is centered in western culture
• The role of physical asana in an accessible practice
• How the practice supports our spiritual body as well as our physical body
• The process of accepting our inevitable death and changes in the body
• How systems of oppression have influenced the current yoga culture
• How Jivana supported his grandmother, an advanced yogi, through aging and death
• How Jivana witnessed the physical practice showing up for folks he was supporting through death and dying in his HIV/AIDS activism 
• The importance of understanding why we do poses, considering their benefits and contraindications
• How to lead a mix leveled class through different physical postures
• How we can support folks in any body experience the intention of the physical postures
• How our language and communication about bodies can disempower of students
• The importance of releasing our conditioning about bodies, ability and accessibility

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:

Can you deepen the experience without doing more physically or leaning on making your practice more demanding? 

Resources: 

• Kemetic yoga 
• Matthew Sanford (we also recommend his book and DVD)
• Jivana’s book - Accessible Yoga
• Amber’s video on eagle pose and larger bodies
• Want to learn more about making asana accessible? Join the January cohort of the Accessible Yoga Training. You can drop your name on the waitlist here, and we’ll let you know when enrollment opens!

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 11,  Jivana Heyman and Amber Karnes sit down to discuss their individual journeys with anxiety. They both share the ways yoga has been helpful and discuss what has not served them. This conversation holds the space to normalize the fact that we are all navigating anxiety and that some of us are navigating anxiety disorders. Jivana, who is writing a new book, felt it was important to have this conversation, giving a space for him to share authentically about his journey through grief and anxiety. In this episode Jivana shares deeply about reshaping his practice diving deeply into self exploration as a way to learn to accept the role anxiety plays in his life. Amber also talks in depth about how yoga gave her new tools to navigate her thoughts, patterns and negative self-talk. 

• The importance of stepping away from technology for our wellness 
• How we can create space for our wellness practices to honor the lives we are living
• How we can drop the stigma of discussing mental illness
• How the death of Jivana’s mother triggered an emergency anxiety attack
• How being a yogi doesn’t not exclude us from navigating anxiety
• How navigating anxiety has reshaped Jivana’s personal practice and his new book
• How teaching brought Jivana back to his personal practice
• The importance of allowing others to teach and lead us as teachers
• How the practice holds space for us to feel our feelings 
• How we can lean into creativity and avoid cultural appropriation 
• How wellness communities lean into ableism in the face of mental health conversations
• How to navigate negative self talk within our practice

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:

How do you remain respectful of the traditions of yoga and make it accessible?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 10,  Jivana welcomes Dianne Bondy to talk about how she has created her platform, grew her career, and built a global yoga community. Dianne talks about how she leaned into the virtual space early on and gives advice for folks looking for tips on how to build their own platforms. This time with Dianne gives great insight into best practices, tools and things to remember as we teach virtually. Jivana and Dianne both talk in depth about the importance of making sure that our virtual offering spaces are accessible to all. Dianne also talks about the responsibility we each have to dismantle white supremacy and the importance of understanding the place of social justice and advocacy in our yoga spaces and personal practice. 

• How travelling less has create more ease for her and revealed how tiring her complex travel schedule actually was prior to the pandemic 
• How the power of manifestation in creating the career she desired 
• How she began her career and grew her global yoga community 
• How she leaned into virtual teaching spaces against pushback from other teachers and folks in the yoga community
• How to create impactful work during these new normals because of social distancing and virtual offerings 
• How to best set up lighting and positioning for teaching virtually
• How to secure the tools you need to teach virtually
• How to make your virtual space accessible to all
• How race and racism are ignored and dismissed in our wellness spaces
• How we have a deep moral responsibility as space holders and teachers of this sacred path
• The responsibility of white teachers and the yoga community to understand the social impact of yoga

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 are you doing to connect your yoga practice to your social advocacy?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 9, Amber and Jivana talk about a recent article Jivana has featured with Yoga Journal talking about yoga’s response to disabilities and illness. Together they explore the belief that folks with disabilities or illness need to be fixed or cured, especially within yoga spaces. Jivana talks in depth about the connection between ableism and white supremacy, making it pervasive and easy to ignore by those who think they are unaffected. Jivana also shares more about the ways ableism is upheld in our wellness spaces by centering healing and curing people. This episode invites us all to investigate the stories we hold about our bodies, disabilities, illness, death, and yoga’s place aside those identities and life transitions. 

• The difference between a medical model of disabilities and the cultural model of disabilities 
• How yoga communities deal with disabilities and illness
• The push from disabilities communities to embrace disabilities as an identity 
• How the move from person first language to identity first language to is showing up in different communities
• How the ableism in our society is the obstacle or limitation, not disabilities 
• How white supremacy is the root of ableism 
• The danger of focusing on the physical aspects of the practice and the importance of teaching the complete practice
• How upholding “advanced asana” as “advanced yoga” upholds ableism
• How positioning healing or curing as the goal of yoga upholds the belief that folks with disabilities or different bodies need to be fixed
• How Jivana’s experience of witnessing how yoga can serve those who are dying
• The importance of yoga to support our inevitable transition to death
• How the role of yoga teachers is to support their inner journey, not to fix others

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:

Does the ability to perform advanced asana make you an “advanced yogi”?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 8 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Shyam Ranganathan and Jivana Heyman have a discussion about Yoga philosophy through a South Asian perspective. They explore the various ways that Western imperialism shows up in the way we interpret and practice yoga, what the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita both say about our responsibility when it comes to other people (social justice), and how translations, interpretation, and a Eurocentric bias can completely change the context and the meanings of the teachings.

In episode 8, Shyam & Jivana discuss: 

• Shyam’s story including why he decided to teach yoga philosophy, why he translated the yoga sutras, and how online education through the Yoga Philosophy school informs his teaching
• Moral philosophy & ethics (or dharma in south asian tradition), an investigation into the right and the good
• Shyam talks about how Yoga is a practice of devotion to the ideal of Ishvara, which is defined by unconservativism and self governance, whereas Yoga philosophy is a question of right action (or social justice)
• How Western imperialism expresses itself as a common theme when we study yoga philosophy (“shut up and get in line” or “don’t question the status quo”) and why intellectual traditions from outside of Europe automatically get labeled as “religion”
• What Shyam thinks of a guru that makes you earn your status and work your way up their ladder… “That’s Plato, not Patanjali”
• What Patanjali has to say about how we should deal with folks who advocate for harm (or against ahimsa)
• Ghandi’s influence on social justice movements and his connection with the sutras
• How yoga is a practice of "getting over yourself"
• Karma yoga and Bhakti yoga in the Gita and the sutras
• How spiritual abuse isn’t yoga, and why modeling yoga after Plato’s model (where a series of hoops is presented as education) is flawed
• How to have discernment when it comes to finding or vetting a teacher, and noticing where we give our power away
• How Shyam understands and defines Ishvara, and how that changes the context of the teachings

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

“I’m not going into my practice to look for a way out of life, but a way in...to experience the fullness of my life.”
-Jivana Heyman

In episode 7 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Amber Karnes and Jivana Heyman talk about duality—the up and down, light and dark, "both/and" nature of life. We talk about how attachment to outcomes and the stories we tell ourselves keep us in a place of suffering, and the antidote to that (spoiler alert, it’s non-attachment and acceptance). We discuss personal experiences and practical ways that we each work with our emotions and grief in our yoga practice. We also talk about the danger of spiritual bypass and how embracing the fullness of our human experience honors the yoga teachings and helps us accept ourselves as we are.

In episode 7, Amber & Jivana discuss: 

• How we are holding opposing truths at the same time and why accepting reality as it is helps us suffer less
• How social media gets us stuck in comparison and the tricks our brain does to try to protect us
• Jivana talks about how his mom’s death led to exploring his emotions as part of his yoga practice 
• Amber talks about how being grounded in non-attachment helped her cope with the huge grief and changes to her life and business post-COVID
• How to use your yoga practice to make friends with your mind, rather than trying to control or discipline your mind
• How Jivana’s journey of fatherhood and parenting his children helped him learn to give himself the tender compassion he gave his children
• Amber talks about a step-by-step way that she processes big emotions like anger
• Jivana discusses how he works with emotions in his meditation practice
• How spiritual bypass and “good vibes only” ignore the reality of life and stop us from
• When we use our yoga practice only for self, we miss a huge opportunity to realize our interconnectedness and honor the depth of the practice and our humanity

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:

Are you willing to accept all aspects of yourself? And if not, why? 

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 6 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Amber and Jivana talk about lessons learned from the Accessible Yoga Training. Jivana digs deep into the yoga philosophy behind this training that informs both of our work and the way we teach. We talk about shifting the power dynamic between teacher and student and what happens when we give students the tools to work with their practice, rather than insisting they fit into a preconceived notion of shapes or sequences. We also talk about how the Accessible Yoga Training builds community between teachers like us whose work sometimes feels isolating. 

• How the Accessible Yoga Training got started including Jivana’s background in AIDS activism, creating a teacher training for folks with disabilities, and the way the training has changed over the years
• How we make our classes more welcoming and safe by meeting our students where they are
• How as teachers we must make sure we aren’t viewing students as lacking something, and as students how we give away our power when we expect a teacher to fix us
• Through redistributing power, teachers can be an example of non-attachment
• How the Accessible Yoga Training helps our students find a way to practice safely and empowers teachers to innovate, not memorize shapes
• How skilled yoga teaching is like art - full of creativity and improvisation
• How we approach cueing multiple levels of a posture or practice at the same time
• How the Accessible Yoga Training has given folks direction for their work and helped teachers to step up as community leaders and share the heart of yoga

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 is my role as yoga teacher (in my classroom, in my students’ lives off the yoga mat, and in the wider world)?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 5 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Amber Karnes and Justine Mastin  discuss:

• Justine’s yoga story: how she got started, what brought her back to the practice, and how she finally found her community at a comic book convention
• Why the geek community saw barriers to accessing wellness and how Justine came up with the idea for YogaQuest
• What to expect from a YogaQuest class, a narrative yoga class based in fandom stories
• Why representation is important for folks who are traditionally left out of wellness spaces 
• Specific ways Justine created her yoga spaces to be more welcoming to folks from the geek community
• How Justine stays in inquiry around cultural appropriation and how YogaQuest is like yoga-fanfic
• Narrative therapy and the power of stories to question social norms and create the lives we imagine
• Justine’s upcoming book and how it helps us to question social norms through the lens of pop culture

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, Justine poses a 2-part question:

• What is the story of my life?
• Who are the important supporting characters? 

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In episode 4 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Jivana Heyman and Nicole Cardoza  discuss:

• Embracing failure and the ability to try new things with resilience, even when things go wrong
• How looking at our work and activism with many different angles and approaches helps us stay flexible and keep the confidence to move forward and just do what needs to be done
• Giving ourselves grace & accountability through failure
• Waiting for permission vs. knowing your lane vs. taking responsibility for jumping in where you do have privilege
• How actually putting ourselves in the way of rejection or failure lets us get better and move forward
• Failure as a practice and learning from failure in asana
• Showing up for ourselves in difficult moments
• Reclaiming our right to be well and what wellness means to Nicole
• Lessons learned from creating the Anti-Racism Daily newsletter

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, Nicole poses a 3-part question:

• What does it look like for your community to be well?

• What’s standing in the way of that?

• What can you do as part of your wellness practice to dismantle those obstacles?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.

In Episode 3 of the Accessible Yoga Podcast, Amber Karnes and Jivana Heyman discuss the responsibility of yoga teachers to have a commitment to accessibility in their group classes and how we can’t let ourselves off the hook by saying, “I’m just not the teacher for everyone.” In this episode, we discuss:

• Making a commitment to accessibility and how that’s different from trying to please everyone
• The importance of creating a culture of permission and safety in our learning spaces
• When a “safe space” for some feels unsafe for others, how we can hear difficult truths without getting defensive
• Are you giving yourself a pass by saying, “I’m not the teacher for everyone.”
• The commitment of yoga teachers to creating equitable learning environments
• Creating a culture of safety and openness where students can feel safe in their bodies
• Shifting from the role of a fitness instructor to a guide who holds space for our students transformation
• Being open to inquiry takes the pressure off us to have all the answers and helps us play to our strengths as yoga teachers
• Shifting away from a physical focus toward the subtler teachings of yoga transforms the way a group yoga class looks
• Thoughts on “advanced” practice and trauma-informed teaching

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 are sitting with this question:

What does having an “advanced yoga practice” mean to you?

Get a transcript, links to resources, and show notes at accessibleyogatraining.com/podcast.