Dr. Jayaweera’s Yoga practice (Myrus Yoga) combines the physical with the inner emotional and spiritual journey supported by a combination of Buddhist teachings and Iyengar and Krishnamacharya Schools or systems of Yoga. She teachers 3 different styles of Yoga – Vinyasa, Hatha, Yin all with specific benefits to body and mind with Yogic and Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practices, a unique mix.

 

Today I speak more about her passion. 

 

Q What made you take up yoga full time? 

 

Yoga teaching is very satisfying especially when my students come and tell me how they achieved things in their lives after starting yoga, how they developed their spirituality how they healed or are healing their bodies and their minds from different lifestyle diseases they have been having for years, it’s a very deeply satisfying task to be able to do yoga as a practitioner myself and to teach what I know to heal and to make other people happy. Nothing of what I used to do in the corporate world or as an entrepreneur before I started being a full time yoga teacher ever gave me that satisfaction.

 

Q What would you say is the biggest reward teaching yoga? 

 

The biggest reward in teaching yoga is to see how people transform in front of your eyes over months or for some people over some years. They just transform into completely different people and that is the most rewarding thing that I ever achieved as a human being in this life.  I have never seen people having negative effects in starting the journey it’s always been positive. The deeply transformative experience that my students experience is my experience as the most rewarding as a teacher.

 

Q Should one be thin to start yoga? 

 

Definitely not.  You should not label or stereotype. Yoga is for every body and everybody so if even if you are obese there are different styles of yoga and different types and different lineages and different paths of yoga that you can take. The misconception of yoga is that yoga is all about physical activity and you need to be thin and you need to be agile and flexible and strong to be able to do yoga. Yoga asanas are the physical aspect of yoga. And that’s only one 8th of what the true and wholesome yoga is all about. Only one eighth. There are 7 more limbs of yoga that people can do if they can’t do asanas. The Yoga postures that you see on social media is only one component. If you take yoga as an umbrella as a whole, there are 8 components to it. I will give you the Sanskrit names

 

1. Yama

2. Niyama

3. Asana

4. Pranayama

5. Prathyahara

6. Dharana

7. Dhyana

8. Samadhi

 

So if you repeat that you will see the asana or the physical postures is only the third limb. There are 7 more things you can do when it comes to yoga that people don’t really know and they completely misunderstand what yoga is all about.  Yoga is not being a gymnast or being an acrobat it’s about connecting your breath to your movement to your mind and yolking all those aspects into the present moment that’s why yoga is spiritual that’s why yoga is meditation. That’s why yoga transforms people yoga is for every body. Even if you are thin, fat even if you are sick you can still do different types of yoga. And you don’t need to worry about your religion or your faith. I have a multicultural, multi religious base of students from all over the world. Yoga connect you to the universe. That’s all.