Yoga studio offers classes for the deaf

Palm Coast Observer
Business

Padma Yoga Owner Micki Higgins will begin offering yoga classes for the hearing impaired March 14.

Micki Higgins had just returned home from a good job at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in 2001, home to a good husband and a good life. But for some reason, she was unhappy.

So she turned on “Oprah,” and saw that the guest was a famous yoga instructor, Rodney Yee. Higgins was entranced.

“I wasn’t drawn to yoga,” she said, cross-legged in her chair. “Yoga found me.”

She noticed the looks of peace upon the faces of those on the show, and about a year later, she bought her first yoga mat.

“I was home,” she said. “That’s the exact feeling I had in my very first class — that I had found home. I had found what I needed … and it’s been a transformation ever since.”

Higgins was born hard of hearing and gave birth to three deaf children. As a way to reach out to the deaf community, she began offering yoga classes for the hearing impaired March 14.

“Their eyes are their ears,” she said, “so they listen with their eyes.” She explained that the deaf classes will trade spoken group instruction for more individualized visual lessons.

Before opening Padma Yoga, at 5 Utility Drive, in 2009, Higgins was a “vagabond yoga teacher.” She traveled from studio to studio for about eight years before opening her own, and she says by now she has gained a following. She leads classes with two other Padma instructors, Beverly Chandler and Lisa Rapos.

“You get a rapport (with students), and that’s very important in yoga,” she said. “If you’re in a class and you don’t feel that, you need to keep searching.”

When Higgins speaks of yoga, conversation often comes back to the spiritual. But yoga is not a religion, she says; rather, it’s a long-term holistic practice.

“Yoga promotes healing in the body through the postures, through the movement, through meditation,” she said. “It’s learning to let go of the stress, learning to let go of the mental activity. … I view it as a way of life.”
On the path to receive her master’s in yoga (a 500-hour teaching certification), Higgins offers a free first class to all residents and a free month of classes to all military veterans. She also hopes to someday develop a scholarship program through the Deaf Yoga Foundation for students who want to become yoga instructors.
For more, visit www.PadmaYogaOnline.com, or call 904-377-4217.