Yoga Therapist Joy Rika Miyatake To Give TedX Talk In September By Writer and Contributor Emily McGinn
For the past 18 years, Palos Verdes local and avid spearfisher Joy Rika Miyatake has been honing her skills as a yoga therapist. Working with clients of ages ranging from 4 to 96, she has guided people through breath work, meditation and yoga. Now, she is planning to give a TEDx talk this September in Florence, Italy.
Miyatake works with clients facing physical challenges or mental trauma, such as anxiety and depression, with a special interest in generational trauma. Her interest stems from her own background — her great-grandfather, a photographer, was interned during World War II and he secretly photographed the Japanese American internment experience. In college, Miyatake became more curious about the generational trauma phenomenon she saw in her own family.
“[In 2002], I started my research in generational trauma. I really got curious about the stories that we passed down, because I know that one side of my family talked about the internment freely, and the other didn't talk about the internment at all, and I started to wonder what was going on there,” she says. “Because of my curiosity in generational trauma and how things get passed down, it led me down the path that I'm on now, which is to help people alleviate these symptoms.”
Miyatake, a fourth-generation photographer, also inherited her father’s photography business in Gardena. However, she could not ignore her passion for yoga therapy and helping people cope with their trauma. For the past four and a half years, she has placed emphasis on helping the Cambodian genocide population, working with people who experienced the genocide firsthand as well as the subsequent generations.
She also runs Joyful Presence, a program she constructed around the yogic philosophy, an ancient teaching that views people as having five layers, or “bodies.” The outermost layer is the physical body, and the subsequent layers are the energy body, the mind body and the wisdom body. The innermost layer — the joyful body — is the focus of Miyatake’s work.
“I think everyone is born with this joyfulness, with the joyful body, and when I have my clients get in touch with what they really want in their highest form of joy, they're able to move through and experience a different version of their reality,” Miyatake says. “Everybody is born with this feeling of joy. It's just that over time, we have things that accumulate on us that keep us from experiencing that reality. It can be a combination of things, of thoughts that our parents have given us, or it could be that somebody told you something mean, or maybe you got into a car accident, you hurt your leg, and maybe a physical symptom is creating it, or maybe the food that we're eating is slowing us down, making it so that it's harder to move, harder to think. So there can be all these other things that can affect your outer layers that keep us from expressing our true nature.”
In line with these teachings, Miyatake believes there is joy in everyone and that it just needs to be unveiled. She has experienced challenges in her own life that she sees as a testament to this.
“I'm here to help people not find, but uncover the joy that they have within themselves. I've gone through a lot of personal struggles. I've struggled with addiction. I've struggled with very challenging health concerns for myself. There were times where I was bedridden, couldn't walk, and I had the health of not being able to go half of a block without pain,” Miyatake says. “So what I see is that if I can do this, I think a lot of people can figure it out. So I would love for that to happen as a movement — to help other people and help the world find their joy, so that they're experiencing this on a daily level.”
In her work with the Cambodian genocide population, Miyatake has witnessed promising stories of healing. She recalls one client who did not feel safe returning to Cambodia for three decades because of her trauma. The conversation sparked the idea of hosting a retreat in Cambodia, where Miyatake could travel with a group so they could work through their struggles together. Eventually, the client was able to return to Cambodia and meet her grandson for the first time — a heartwarming moment that sticks with Miyatake.
She had another client who was not able to walk, which severely inhibited his quality of life and ability to work. After Miyatake working with him for a couple years, he was able to travel to Thailand by himself and visit his girlfriend, who he had not seen for years because of his condition.
“Stories like that are what keep me motivated to keep doing what I'm doing, because I know that it helps people,” Miyatake says.
In the upcoming TEDx talk, she will be discussing yoga therapy, the joyful body and the connection between one’s inner joy and the way one lives.
“I was presented with the opportunity to share this work with the larger world,” Miyatake says. “When I find opportunities that both terrify and excite me, I lean in towards them. A friend of mine who recently gave her TEDx talk was the one who invited me, and I thought that if she could do it, I guess maybe I can do it.”
Miyatake is also working on a book.
Through her work as a yoga therapist, Miyatake has witnessed her own growth, as well. She lives by the idea that “joy is the kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens,” and she aims to share her authentic self with the world.
“If you shy away from your own truth, and you make yourself not feel like you're living in your authenticity, you lose a part of yourself,” she says. “So I think it's important to do these practices, like the practices that help with self-regulation, so that you can feel more yourself and the joy that is connected to yourself.”
You can follow Miyatake’s journey on her Facebook page and check out her website here. You can also look into her Envision Workshop, which she hosts for those interested in getting involved in her program Joyful Presence.
Bio:
Emily McGinn is a journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She enjoys reporting on and writing about a variety of topics from lifestyle to news, especially in her areas of specialty, environmental science and political science.