Bethaney Mouzer on setting up SignYoga and her slot at Om Yoga festival for the BSL community

Interview by Rebecca-Anne Withey

Hi Beth, I was thrilled to read on Facebook about your work teaching regular classes and the wellbeing day you recently held. Can you tell me a bit about yourself first of all?

Thanks Rebecca! I’m so excited to be finally teaching what I love. I am a BSL yoga teacher based in the West Midlands, delivering weekly classes and travelling around the UK leading workshops so people can practice at home or say they’ve tried yoga.

I have been fortunate enough to grow up in a signing community, enabling me to experience life through my eyes. I am a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) with deaf siblings and now niece and nephews. Signing is a huge part of my life, in fact I feel more comfortable expressing myself in BSL then I do in spoken English.

What inspired you to train in Yoga?

I’ve been practising yoga for over 4 years and it has changed my life for the better! I just want people to have the same opportunity.

Yoga may look like just stretching on a mat but really it’s much deeper than that. You learn things about yourself and you start to accept things out of your control.

Yoga makes me calmer, flexible, fit, healthy and just a better human being! Trust me, I notice when I’ve missed yoga.

Doing a Yoga course was always on my bucket list but I’d been putting it off for years whilst I was doing my Interpreting Diploma. When that came to an end I decided to do a 4 week immersive yoga course in Thailand last year and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

If there’s something that you keep saying ‘one day’ to – my advice is to go do it and do it as soon as you can!

After completing your training, what made you coin ‘SignYoga’ and how did you go about setting it up?

I talked to the community about yoga and always had the same response – that it’s difficult to access due to communication barriers and not being able to follow the teacher.

I wanted to set up weekly classes but did not want to promote it through my personal Facebook. So, SignYoga was born! Since then it’s been a platform to promote better mental and physical wellbeing through an umbrella of yoga. How we move our bodies, eat, think, see and feel.

The key is to move your body, whether it’s football, running, netball, yoga, anything! Be conscious of what food you’re putting in it too!

The Internet has it’s pros and cons and we are fortunate to access information at our fingertips. However, there is a huge lack of BSL access to wellbeing, yoga, meditation, self-care and self-love in comparison to English.

I can see there has been more promotion over the last few years but it’s almost 2020 and we’ve only just started speaking about mental health! This is why I try to share as much knowledge and experience as possible through my platforms.

Yoga helps you de-stress and reduce anxiety, along with many other things and people should be able to access this in their first language.

What do you think are deaf peoples biggest barriers when learning Yoga and how does SignYoga overcome these?

There are many factors that make a great mainstream yoga teacher. Being able to verbally lead a class without demonstrating, to walk around the room whilst teaching, to verbally guide a group in sync with one another. Having a dim lit room or candles to set an ambient atmosphere is great but these strengths make it extremely difficult for someone trying to lip-read or visually follow the teacher.

My classes are all delivered in BSL and focus on alignment, doing poses correctly and flowing together as a group, which is beautiful to see!

I have a few masterclasses coming up, where I will be showing mainstream teachers how they can adapt their classes to make them more accessible without necessarily knowing BSL.

I know people who go to mainstream classes and become loyal students to teachers who don’t know BSL, because they’ve put the effort in and made it work. I want to see more of that!

What classes/courses do you currently offer to BSL users?

At the moment I offer 2 weekly public classes:

Hatha Yoga every Monday at The Zen Shed in Worcester at 7:15pm
Vinyasa Yoga every Wednesday at Birmingham BID at 6:30pm

I do monthly workshops around the UK so that people can have a taste of yoga and hopefully be able to practice at home. I also lead weekend yoga retreats and yoga days!

I was excited to find out that you are going to be teaching the first ever BSL yoga class at the Om Yoga show. How did you get the gig?!

I know! I’m so excited that I get to share this with the deaf community! I proposed it to Om Yoga and they were immediately interested. They are now planning to have BSL Interpreters at their future events making it more accessible for deaf people.

The Om Yoga show is a full weekend event at Alexandra Palace, London. My class in BSL is only happening on the 19th October, with tickets for this event free for the deaf community. My session will be on the Saturday at 1-1.45pm.

You can contact me for a free ticket to the festival! This is the first time the Om Show has had a yoga class in BSL!

I’m hoping this will raise more awareness amongst the yoga community and how they can make their classes more inclusive for deaf and hard of hearing students. Small steps, big changes!

That’s amazing! What are your aspirations in terms of the growth of SignYoga? What would you like to achieve in your career?

I just want to reach out to as many people as I can. I want people to say, “I tried yoga and I loved it” or “I tried yoga and it’s not for me”. I want to give back to a community that I’ve grown up in and I want people to feel good about their selves.

I’d love to lead more yoga retreat days. I recently hosted one with 22 people where we made our own mala beads and meditated with them. There was a vibrational healing tent and lots of yoga of course! I’ve been to yoga festivals myself and have always wanted to share that feeling and experience with deaf people.

I’m coming along next time! Is there anything else you would like to tell us about?

I am often asked ’What is Yoga? Yoga means ‘union’ which is of the mind, body and spirit. It improves health and happiness and can be practised on and off the mat. Reminding you to connect with the breath and being aware of the present moment rather than being stuck in the past or worrying about the future.

That is the beauty of yoga, you can take what you want and need from it. Maybe you just want to stretch and loosen stiff joints. To relax and unwind or even just a good workout!

Yoga has made me strong, mentally and physically. I can balance on my forearms, I can go upside down and bend backwards but most of all I am content and it’s taken me a long time to realise that we have everything we need right inside of us. You just have to learn to love yourself and once you do, everything changes.

Follow Beth’s pages for upcoming events and become a signing yogi or if you are a qualified yoga teacher, lead meditations/mindfulness or are a BSL wellbeing advocate, please get in touch with Beth!

www.facebook.com/signyogauk
www.instagram.com/thesigningyogi
www.youtube.com/signyoga
www.signyoga.co.uk
bslsignyoga@gmail.com