129: Do THIS To Make Your Teaching Even Better with Jivana Heyman
I know you listen to this podcast because you're interested in growing, evolving and becoming an even better teacher and Jivana Heyman (he/him) is one of the most inspiring teacher friends that I have. His wisdom runs deep and wide: He pushes me to think more critically about my teaching and his insights about teaching are shared in a profoundly tender way.
In case you don’t know, Jivana is the founder and director of Accessible Yoga, an organization dedicated to increasing access to the yoga teachings and supporting yoga teachers. He’s the author of the books: Accessible Yoga: Poses and Practices for Every Body; Yoga Revolution: Building a Practice of Courage & Compassion; and a new book, The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body. His books, classes, and trainings offer support to yoga teachers and yoga therapists in finding ways to bring creativity and collaboration into their teaching while still respecting the ancient yoga tradition.
Check out the other two episodes with Jivana:
In this episode, you’ll hear:
how Jivana recommends we balance tradition and innovation in asana
how teachers can innovate in a way that honors the roots of yoga
some thoughts on the abuse present in so many lineages and why ethics creates accessibility
the specific skills that yoga teachers can learn to make their offerings accessible to everyone
the inherent power imbalance between student and teacher
how we can use language to make the practice invitational AND clear
the kinds of support Jivana recommend yoga teachers find
the recurring teaching nightmare that both Jivana and I have!!
Learn More From Jivana:
This episode is sponsored by OfferingTree! Sign up at www.offeringtree.com/mentor to get 50% off your first three months (or 15% off any annual plan). With OfferingTree, yoga teachers put their schedule on a personally branded website where students can book classes and even pay or donate online. All of this can be set up in 10 minutes or less. OfferingTree supports me with each sign-up.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Today I’m revisiting one of the ideas I talked about when I first started the podcast nine years ago: the idea that yoga teachers need to find their “ideal student” or a very specific niche in order to build a successful teaching career.
I still believe there is some value in getting specific about who we’re speaking to when we communicate about our work. Specific language can make our marketing more compelling and help potential students understand how our teaching might support them.
But I’ve become increasingly convinced that the idea of finding your perfect student doesn’t translate well to the actual work of teaching yoga.