A Queer Dharma &
Yoga Revolution Book Club
with authors
Jacoby Ballard & Jivana Heyman
and guests
Susanna Barkataki,
Michelle Cassandra Johnson &
Kelley Nicole Palmer
Thursdays, March 3rd, 10th & 17th
11:30am-1pm Pacific // 2:30pm-4pm Eastern
(7:30pm-9pm GMT // Fridays 6.30am-8am AEDT)
Brought to you by Accessible Yoga Association and Off The Mat, Into The World
Do your book shelves hold both A Queer Dharma and Yoga Revolution?
Have you read them one after the other, or perhaps plan to?
Or seen our conversations and uplift of one another’s works?
Do you ever wonder, if these books could talk, what would they say to each other?
Join Jivana Heyman and Jacoby Ballard for this 3-part book club hosted by guest facilitators Susanna Barkataki, Michelle Cassandra Johnson, and Kelley Nicole Palmer. As two white, queer, anti-racist yoga practitioners and teachers, from the moment we learned of the overlap of our release dates, we wanted to collaborate, and have our books in conversation with each other. We have orchestrated that in different ways already, and also thought a joint book club would be a fabulous way to discuss overlapping and intersecting teachings that guide our lives and our politics.
Each week we will have a different facilitator who is intimately familiar with both of our texts guiding us through a different topic, and we will take questions and inquiries directly from you. Let’s dig in together! Let’s practice collaboration and mutual uplift!
Join us!
Part 1: Queer Yoga
with guest Susanna Barkataki
March 3rd, 2022
11:30am-1pm PST // 2:30pm-4pm EST
Yoga and Dharma for Our Times
In this conversation, Susanna will guide us through the queer aspect of each book. How are our practices inherently queer? Is a practice queer just because we are LGBTIQQA+ identified? How has there been room for our whole selves in yoga spaces, and what has not been welcome?
Part 2: Internal Work
with guest Michelle C. Johnson
March 10th, 2022
11:30am-1pm PST // 2:30pm-4pm EST
How Do We Shift our Practice to Be Supportive & Empowering
In this section, Michelle will guide us toward the inner practice of social justice, shifting from a practice that pushes, demands, and forces toward one that is intuitive, kind, and supports an alignment of our thoughts, words, and actions. What are those practices for Jivana and Jacoby? How have we adapted what we were trained in, through our lived experiences? How can that be a model for other practitioners?
Part 3: Outer Work
with guest Kelley Nicole Palmer
March 17th, 2022
11:30am-1pm PST // 2:30pm-4pm EST
What is the Relationship Between Spiritual Practice and Activism?
In this section, Kelley Nicole will guide us in a conversation around activism and practice. We will talk about our social justice work, and how it’s benefited by our practice, and how the practice can reinforce social justice (or replicate systems of injustice if we’re not careful). Jivana and Jacoby each came into practice as political beings, which created complication and possibility in different ways for each of them. Is yoga political? Can politics be yogic?
Register Now!
Accessibility is important to us, including the financial accessibility of our offerings. Please select the pricing tier that best reflects your access to financial resources, or apply for a full or partial scholarship.
*Captioned replays will be available for registrants
About The Books
Yoga Revolution: Building a Practice of Courage & Compassion
It is time to address the dissonance between the often superficial way yoga is currently being practiced and the depth of yoga’s ancient universal spiritual teachings. In this clarion call to action, Jivana Heyman offers a blueprint for cultivating a practice based in the ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras in service of those experiencing exclusion and oppression.
Heyman illuminates the yogic mandate of seva—or acts of service that see, care for, and uplift those around us—as a way to serve the world without losing your way. Through pose sequences, practice prompts such as “Embracing Failure,” and stories from yoga teachers who are implementing seva in their classes, Heyman shows you what it means to serve, how to serve, and how to promote inclusivity through your service. Our job, says Heyman, is not to clear our mind through yoga practice, but rather to expand it so widely that it can embrace the entire universe.
A Queer Dharma: Yoga & Meditations for Liberation
Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice. Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks.
Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma--complex, vicarious, historical, and collective - perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding.
In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like lovingkindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies.
Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.
About the Authors
Jivana Heyman (he/him)
Yoga Revolution: Building A Practice of Courage & Compassion
Jivana Heyman, C-IAYT, E-RYT500 is the founder and director of the Accessible Yoga Association, an international non-profit organization dedicated to increasing access to the yoga teachings. He’s the author of Accessible Yoga: Poses and Practices for Every Body and Yoga Revolution: Building a Practice of Courage & Compassion (Shambhala Publications).
Jivana has specialized in teaching yoga to people with disabilities with an emphasis on community building and social engagement. Out of this work, the nonprofit Accessible Yoga Association was created to support education, training, and advocacy with the mission of shifting the public perception of yoga. Accessible Yoga offers Conferences, Monthly Programming, a Podcast, and a popular Ambassador program.
Jivana coined the phrase, “Accessible Yoga,” over ten years ago, and it has now become the standard appellation for a large cross section of the immense yoga world. He brought the Accessible Yoga community together for the first time in 2015 for the Accessible Yoga Conference, which has gone on to become a focal point for this movement.
Jivana is also the creator of the Accessible Yoga Training and the co-founder of the online Accessible Yoga School with Amber Karnes, which is a platform for continued education for yoga teachers in the field of equity and accessibility. They also created the Accessible Yoga Podcast in 2020.
Over the past 25 years, Jivana has led countless yoga teacher training programs around the world, and dedicates his time to supporting yoga teachers who are working to serve communities that are under-represented in traditional yoga spaces.
Connect with Jivana: www.jivanaheyman.com ~ @jivanaheyman
Jacoby Ballard (he/they)
A Queer Dharma: Yoga & Meditations for Liberation
Jacoby Ballard (he/they) is a social justice educator and yoga teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah known for his playfulness, heart-opening, and commitment to change from the inside out. As a yoga teacher with 20 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and runs the Resonance mentorship program for certified yoga teachers to find their niche and calling.
In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience. Jacoby received Yoga Journal’s Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016, and an award by Reclamation Ventures in 2021.
Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non profit and business offices, a maximum security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion and consults on DEI for yoga and meditation organizations. He is the author of A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation, released in 2021.
Connect with Jacoby: www.jacobyballard.net ~ @jacobyballard
