Jnani Chapman is a master at speaking to the body; she’s skilled at the sweet-talking compassion that expresses the type of love that we may be lucky to experience in this lifetime. Yet if we’re really lucky, we cross paths with someone like Jnani who believes that this love happens not just because of luck – but because it is part and parcel of who we are. Feeling this love is part of the healing process and it allows us to experience wellness at all levels. To inspire this, Jnani puts her lyrical voice to good use in her work with individuals with cancer or other chronic illnesses when she teaches them to talk to their bodies with a caring and sincere expression of love rather the shame, betrayal or fear that can often accompany a diagnosis. It’s not only people who may need to learn how to live or how to heal who need to learn how to talk to the body. Caregivers, too, benefit from both the ability to compassionately talk to themselves as well as to the people they serve.
This speech is a form of Yoga therapy. And it’s a therapy that Jnani combines with all of the other tools of the practice. She knows these tools well from decades of study and experience with a practice that includes working with individuals to small and large groups, including the training and mentoring of numerous Yoga teachers and healthcare providers around the world. Her training and background in both nursing and massage therapy compliment her practice of Integral Yoga in the lineage of Swami Satchidananda. This was the swami who was famous not only for his opening “Om” at Woodstock but also for founding Yogaville, an ashram in rural Virginia as well as notably mentoring Dr. Dean Ornish, whose groundbreaking research investigating the effects of Yoga, meditation, diet and lifestyle (including support groups) increased the visibility of Yoga as therapy and the potential for the practice to be integrated into modern medical settings. Fitting for Jnani’s background, lineage and interests, she has worked for the Dean Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease and also assisted as a nurse and teacher for nearly a decade during Dr. Ornish’s private retreat programs.
For more than twenty years, she has been a staff member at the groundbreaking Cancer Help Program at Commonweal in Bolinas, California, and at the Smith Farm Cancer Center in Washington DC. She’s participated in research studies and even served a stint as the Executive Director of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Jnani served as one of the founding clinical specialists in complementary therapies at the University of California San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also on the faculty at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine.
While her list of accomplishments is impressive, the resume only hints to the skills beneath. She understands the practice of Yoga therapy from all angles and addressing all of the koshas – the various layers of the body from the physical to the subtle and the states of bliss. Along with the gift of compassionate speech, of word made manifest into action and attitude in the body, she regularly utilizes practices including pranayama (breath techniques), massage (she’s also a massage therapist), acupressure (teaching people how to use pressure points for self-care), nutrition, guided imagery, meditation and Yoga asana. (Her emphasis is usually on nurturing restorative poses if someone is facing head-on the effects of a chronic or life-threatening imbalance in the body.)
The ever-shifting nature of cultivating balance in the body is something that Jnani understands well, even beyond her avocation. In the San Francisco Bay, she keeps two boats, Sanctuary and Oasis. They’re sailing vessels that she has restored – another form of the therapeutic application of the Yoga practice. She treats them with as much care as she does any of the people with whom she shares the path. And the nurturing home on the water is reminiscent of the depth and the easy laugher in her eyes.
Even after decades of teaching and working with people individually with chronic illnesses, sometimes being their rock as they move through the dying process in their healing, she shows no signs of slowing down. Jnani continues to share her knowledge and experience with teachers who are looking for the secrets to how to hold space with compassion. In my own studies, I have crossed paths with Jnani numerous times, beginning with my own therapeutic Yoga training, before I ever thought about entering nursing school. Knowing that she has walked a similar path, straddled East and West and found a compassionate road to work therapeutically in a variety of settings, has served as a constant beacon of inspiration for me over the years.
Jnani Chapman, RN, CYT teaches in the Yoga Therapy Rx program, founded by Larry Payne, PhD and held at Loyola Marymount University: samata.com/LMUprogram.php
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.