In Episode 24, Amber Karnes and Jivana Heyman sit down to answer questions submitted by our listeners and community. First, Jivana and Amber talk about the ways that we can offer accessible classes in the new virtual landscape while taking into consideration the impact of the pandemic on teaching yoga. Jivana shares a list of his favorite texts for studying yoga philosophy, and finally, Amber and Jivana give some tips on how to include philosophy and self-study in your classes. This conversation...
Jan 05, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 24
In Episode 23 Amber Karnes sits down with Karin Carlson, yoga teacher, community advocate, and founder of Return Yoga. Through Return Yoga’s teacher training program and community outreach, Karin and other local teachers work in domestic violence shelters, jails, youth crisis centers, mental health contexts, and substance abuse treatment centers. Karin and Amber jump into a conversation about the ways white folks do harm when they rush to diversify their studios without actually understanding or...
Dec 29, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 23
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 val...
Dec 22, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 22
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 w...
Dec 15, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 21
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 ...
Dec 08, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 20
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 ta...
Dec 01, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 19
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. Kim...
Nov 24, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 18
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 t...
Nov 17, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 17
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...
Nov 10, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 16
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 t...
Nov 03, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 15
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 t...
Oct 27, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 14
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 ...
Oct 20, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 13
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 phy...
Oct 13, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 12
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 an...
Oct 06, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 11
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 offe...
Sep 29, 2020•58 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Episode 9 Show Notes 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...
Sep 22, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Episode 8 Show Notes 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 con...
Sep 15, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 8
“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 expe...
Sep 08, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 7
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 Acce...
Sep 01, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Episode 5 Show Notes 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 a...
Aug 25, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 5
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 jumpin...
Aug 18, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 4
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 sp...
Aug 11, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In Episode 2, Amber Karnes interviews Kelley Palmer, writer, yoga teacher, wellness advocate, and community organizer. In this episode: Kelley introduces herself, talks about how she came to yoga, and explains why social justice has been part of her practice from the beginning How Kelley began teaching yoga and how that was informed by the way anti-blackness shows up in wellness How yoga spaces often mirror the harm that exists in society for folks with marginalized identities The responsibility...
Aug 04, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In episode 1: Amber talks about her work: community-building around yoga, social justice, and body image Jivana shares his background with yoga and social justice including how he got started with yoga, how Accessible Yoga came to be, and how his participation in AIDS activism laid the groundwork for his work today How a community of practice (like the global Accessible Yoga community) supports marginalized practitioners and teachers to be of service and stay connected to one another Yoga is not...
Jul 22, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 1
