We were lucky to catch up with Randy Boyd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Randy , appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

When I was in college in my early twenties I started practicing yoga, meditating, and studying yoga philosophy as a spiritual path. As time went by my practice waned. My life was very full as a school teacher, environmental activist, whitewater raft guide, and organic farmer. I exercised routinely. I was a runner and weekend warrior on the basketball court.

I always had a yearning to return to my yoga practice but never quite did. Then when I turned forty, I was in a lot of shoulder, knee, and foot pain. Then when I turned forty, I had a lot of shoulder, knee, and foot pain. I tried physical therapy and got treatment from chiropractors and osteopaths. Sometimes these modalities helped and sometimes they did not help and on occasions they even made my pain worse. I hit rock bottom. I was in near constant physical pain.

That was a defining moment in my life when I returned to yoga. I was lucky because early on I was introduced to a style of yoga that used the science of anatomy to build a practice in a way that created new healthy patterns of posture in each pose. The practice merged the heart centered life affirming philosophy of yoga with modern medical science.

This life affirming philosophy teaches that everything that happens to us is an opportunity for an awakening, that stumbling blocks can become stepping stones, that challenges can initiate change, that obstacles are opportunities for growth. I followed this philosophy which led to a new life path.

I started traveling all over the country as often as I could to receive training as a yoga teacher and certified yoga therapists. I studied with some of the best teachers in the world including. my main teacher Todd Norian of Ashaya Yoga. I also studied with Loren Fishman, a physician who has published research on the medical benefits of yoga, Ellen Saltonstall who has written books on yoga for osteoporosis and arthritis, Martin Kirk who gave up his job as a bio-mechanical engineer for NASA to travel the world to teach yoga therapy, and Doug Keller who has written many books on the therapeutic applications of Yoga and who also teaches all over the world.

Within a year of studying this style of yoga my pain was gone, pain that I had tried for years to heal. I started sharing what I had learned with other people who were in pain. Before too long I had a thriving practice as a yoga therapist.

I started training yoga teachers in the Ashaya method. I was also in demand as a quest teacher to teach anatomy and the therapeutic applications of yoga in other schools of yoga. I have trained close to one hundred teachers as the led teacher in my trainings and have been a quest teacher in dozens of other trainings in five states. I have taught online trainings with students from all over the country and world. I also have a full schedule of teaching private yoga therapy classes to individuals with back pain, shoulder pain, scoliosis, osteoporosis and other injuries.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Randy Boyd and I live in WV on a 40-acre organic farm that borders the New River Gorge National Park, the nation’s newest national park.  My life has been very full and diverse. When I graduated college I worked for a short time in a tofu factory, then for 30 years I was a schoolteacher and environmental activist. On the weekends and in the summer, I merged my love of nature with a job as a whitewater raft guide. My wife and I also grow organic food and flowers on our 40-acre farm. My primary job and focus for the last 15 years has been training yoga teachers and teaching private yoga therapy sessions to clients that are in pain.

“It gives me great satisfaction to empower others with the knowledge and tools to help them create new patterns of movement in their bodies so that they can heal pain and live a pain free life. An important aspect of this process is sharing the life affirming philosophy of yoga.

I am most proud of the fact that I used my pain to create a whole new passion, a career path that not only helps people but gives my life meaning, satisfaction and joy.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The life affirming yogic philosophy that informs my teaching states that nature is inherently resilient and intelligent. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from difficulty. When there is a volcano in nature after the eruption life returns almost immediately. The human body and the human spirit is resilient . The body is programmed to heal. When you cut your finger the body’s immune system rushes to the site to heal. When you align with the intelligence of nature your body will become resilient. Sometimes you have to go through a challenge in life to tap into the body’s innate resiliency. The injuries in my back, shoulders, knees and feet were the challenges that initiated tapping into this healing quality of resiliency.  When I aligned with the intelligence of nature and tapped into the deep well spring of resilience that is inside every person my injuries healed. Learning how to heal my own body became the steppingstone to a new career path for me as I taught others how to align their body, to adjust their posture with nature’s order to become free from pain.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

The most important thing I do to help people heal from pain is not so much the knowledge that I give them or the practice that we do. The most important thing I impart to my students is I empower them to believe that they can heal their pain.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.randyboydyoga.com
• Facebook: WV Yoga Tribe and or Randy Boyd