Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenn Richardson.
Hi Jenn, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I have lived in San Diego for 18 years. I moved from Southern Virginia at the tender age of just 19. It felt like finding my soul mate when I first started practicing yoga. A few months into practice I made a choice to dedicate my life to forever being a student. Young, nieve, curious and ambitious I sought to know the depths of reverence, movement, science, and humanity. By 21 years old I was working through the athletic department at the University of San Diego teaching sport-specific yoga which also meant psychologically specific mentorship for student-athletes. This position pushed me to rise to the occasion, to meet the athletes where they were in all ways, and to support them.
Mainstream yoga didn’t work for most of my athletes so I learned and taught them Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Martial principles of movement, and functional movements that allowed for greater ease, mobility, and inner strength. I studied Chinese Bodywork at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine just so that I could continue offering optimization and recovery. The science that I was learning spilled out and into the general public classes I was also teaching; 3 or 4 a day to be more accurate. My life was about movement. I was and am completely dedicated to creating a movement methodology that supported everyone from beginners to advanced as well as collegiate and professional athletes. This is how Mixed Yoga Arts were born. Learning to move animalistic, primal, and innately is the purest expression of yoga becomes it embodies freedom. Yoga is a liberation practice and Mixed Yoga Arts foster that. My job is to awaken within people what is already there and known. My job is to bring humans back to their bodies, where their truth is; it’s not to tell someone that they are doing something “right or wrong” and it’s especially not to tell people what to believe. Your truth is in you and in my shared group experience we create an environment where everyone feels safe and resilient enough to be themselves and move in truth and freedom.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Yes and No. I have always been guided. My intuition is very strong and my body will immediately tell me “Yes or No.” It has been smooth in the sense that I can rely on my inner knowing but it has been very bumpy when it comes to the inevitable journey of meeting threshold moments and experiencing dark nights of the soul. This path is not for the faint of heart; I know that the treasures lie at the bottom of the underworld, buried deep in the dark.
The treasures of course are the greatest gifts that I can offer my community and the collective. Those gifts are usually the same for all of us; our art and expression of it; the wisdom gained from pain. Creating a methodology comes with a lot of deep inner work. The big and the little traumas have shaped my consciousness, they have given me a choice as to how I see myself and how I choose to show up in the world as a human, a woman, a mother, and simply a soul on an endless journey.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I facilitate group class experiences that are somatic in nature, yoga at its deep core. To call it “Yoga” exclusively is a disservice to the methodology because it is experienced much more constellated than that. Through my years of teaching, observing, feeling, and refining I began to outline a methodology that honors 5 specific anatomical principles coupled with specific movement patterns as well as paired with esoteric wisdom teachings. The intention is to support a person’s personal movement practice as well as name their heroic journey. We innately move for our physical health but we also intuitively move for our emotional health as well; MYA speaks to emotional mobility through the language of Somatic Experiencing.
In my classes, immersions, retreats, and trainings you would see self-touch and hear loud screams, moans, groans, tones, laughter, and tears. We work with our nervous system to integrate trauma of all kinds, we hold space for one another by doing the same. It is a collective experience that you co-create. We move like the human animals we are and expand our consciousness like the souls we are. The practice is not only somatically informative and healing, but it is also a sustainability practice for athletes. We rehab as well as train. We dissect innate movement patterns and bring language, even stories to the sequences so that it becomes internalized. It is organic Qi Gong, ecstatic yoga, Contact Improv.. when the mood strikes we grapple-not to dominate but to dance with one another’s energy and hold space for healing. It’s community.
In addition to the yogic certifications I hold, I am a certified Weck Method coach in the lineage of David Weck and I studied at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine.
I am known for my creative classes, my authenticity, and my love. I am known for my reverence and understanding of the body and the way I can speak to science and spirit in the same breath. I am most proud of the fact that I have been in San Diego, serving my community for 18 years. Whoever meets me along the way knows they are safe with me, that I will hold their truth with respect and do my best to meet them where they are. I am most proud of Mixed Yoga Arts launching as a methodology and our accompanying “Citizen and Somatic” Journal, Source, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking.
I take a risk every day of my life. I count on other people finding value in my classes, which is ultimately me, and investing in that. I have never known a salary, paid time off, overtime, stock options, paid insurance, etc.
I have counted on myself every single day to show up, offer something unique, meaningful, and authentic and pray that people continue to find value in that. I can’t imagine living life any other way. It has kept me on my toes and pushed me to go further and deeper, extract the truth and share my findings.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://playeveryday.co/
- Instagram: @zenjenn11
Image Credits
Jess Bernstein and Teal Hankins
