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4Lluvia Higuera
I am so happy to have this opportunity to participate on this #WellnessWednesday as VPAM continues to explore all the possibilities of what wellness is and can be for each one of us as beings and artists. I think it’s important to expose ourselves to as many healing modalities as possible and to stay curious so we can find what works for each of us. For me, my own wellness exploration has led me to yoga. It is a personal and physical wellness practice that allows me to quiet the outside world and familiarize, accept and nurture my inner workings.Through the practice of yoga I have been able to develop compassion for myself and nurture all that brings me back to myself. By teaching yoga it has allowed me to reinforce bonds with others who are also open to exploring space within themselves. In that way my wellness, your wellness, ripples out and becomes #communitywellness that we can all participate in.
I strive to make myself present and available as my own teachers have done for me in my life. This generosity led me to start several photography projects, such as the Artist-Educator series and my upcoming Healer series. I chose to make portraits of artists and now healers who are living examples of the type of voices from my community I wished I had access to while I was studying, growing and searching. They have coalesced in my imagination as a source of knowledge that is formative on many levels to our future. In my eyes, these groups of individuals are shaping conversations that inspire envisioning a new dialogue for future endeavors in education, wellness and culture production. Documenting their towering importance has been healing in and of itself.
As a public school student, art school student and a student of yoga, I kept noticing that my community was not welcomed to nurture itself. I noticed taking yoga classes that there were many communities and people like my tias and tios and best friends that didn’t have access/haven’t been exposed to/or been to a yoga class where they felt welcomed, let alone comfortable. I teach to welcome the community, especially people of color, older folks and those that feel unrepresented by the fitness and yoga industry standard.
When Los Angeles went into lockdown I chose to offer donation based yoga classes online to support my community. I hope you will join me and your community in nurturing wellness tools together on this #WellnessWednesday. All you need is enough space to lie down (floor or bed) and a book to lay on your stomach for some simple breathing and movement exercises. See you then!
Take part in online yoga sessions hosted by Lluvia!
Click below for class information and sign-ups.
Artist Bio:
Lluvia Higuera (b. 1975, Los Angeles) is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Photography Program. She works as a freelance photographer, yoga instructor and arts educator, teaching in museums and non-profit arts organizations. She has led workshops and classes for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Latin American Art, Norton Simon, Hammer Museum, ArtworxLA and others. Her independent experience in arts education, coupled with her photographic practice, has defined her approach to art and its pedagogy to act on new questions about the role of art in community well-being. She also has made a long-standing commitment to individuals and groups that have little or limited access to health care by teaching restorative forms of yoga and art to help them gain physical and mental well-being by teaching with studios and spaces that support this philosophy, such as Eastside Cafe, People’s Yoga, The Cancer Support Center and the YMCA.