Our Accessible Future. An Interview with Jivana Heyman
You’ve heard of Accessible Yoga, right?
The movement started with the term, which was coined around 2007 by today’s guest.
Jivana and I talk all about our current ambitions for the yoga teaching and industry landscape, and discuss how we can make yoga accessible to all folks.
We also discuss where we go from here—how is our future more accessible, more non-profit focused, and more dedicated to the tradition and practice of yoga.
Take a listen.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
-Covid definitely made us more accessible as an industry. the ability to find a welcoming community aligned with who you are is also much easier now that more of us are online. So don’t forget to be your authentic self as you interact with others in the online space–it makes a difference when you are working to find your people.
- Making training accessible is something that is at the forefront of Accessible Yoga’s work. How we train has always been a system for the privileged, especially when training existed only in person. Seeing this change is exciting, and it allows us to share our yoga community with even more amazing humans with new and fresh ideas. This diversity will only make us better and stronger as an industry.
- Online teaching has leveled the playing field for yoga teachers. Often times before Covid you had to become incredibly popular before you were able to travel and teach. The internet now allows us an entirely new pathway to build careers as yoga pros.
- The lack of yoga non-profit organizations, is a big red flag for us as an industry. Full stop. Non-profits are a sign of a thriving ecosystem–where we have built an industry stable enough to not only provide for ourselves but also to address the needs of those who are not thriving.
-That said: Here are the names of some other great non-profit organizations in the larger yoga space. Casa de Paz, SLV, Flow For Black Lives, and Mimi’s Yoga Kids all do work in their respective communities–and you can go back to previous episodes with their founders Gina Barrett, Osiris Booque, and Mimi Felton to get more info on those organizations.
-Empowering folks from all communities to become yoga teachers is really important. The more we see not only a diverse range of yoga students but yoga teachers as well, the better off both ethically and financially we become.
RESOURCES