JOY YOGA

Billie Jo Joy, Ed.M., R.Y.T., is co-founder, and co–manager of Art & Soul, and owner of JoyYoga. She is Iyengar trained (20 years primarily with Zoe Stewart), Kripalu certified (200 hours), Yoga of Energy Flow (500 hours). Her instruction is ornamented with yogic philosophy, experiential anatomy, and poetry. She offers a safe and friendly place for practice that balances strength, flexibility, reflection, and spiritual upliftment. She is well known for her popular gentle and restorative yoga classes and her retreats in Mexico, Italy, and Michigan. She also teaches yoga to adults with disabilities at Triangle, Inc. and is on the part-time faculty at Emerson College where she teaches Movement for Actors, and Improvisation. Billie Jo is a movement specialist having studied many forms including modern dance, ballroom, ballet, jazz, tap, butoh, continuum, authentic movement, mind-body centering, improvisation, and contact improvisation for over 30 years. Billie Jo has taught people of all ages from infants to elderly, to people with disabilities, in all kinds of settings from day care centers, to college campuses, to corporations, developing original and effective classes for the populations she serves.

Billie Jo Joy is also an accomplished dancer, choreographer, actor, writer, director, and producer. Her credits include Dust to Dust (2006); Venus De Mini Van, Mothers in the Breakdown Lane (2002) which became the off–broadway play Eve–olution (2004); two highly acclaimed productions of The Vagina Monologues (2000, 2004); Small White Woman Impersonating Martin Luther King, (1999). She toured internationally, with Paula Josa–Jones Performance Works, when the company received two NEA grants. She is a certified teacher of Action Theater, and has studied extensively with the Roy Hart Voice Theater in France. She is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild: The Deer Hunter (1978), Spiderman 2 (2005); Background: Black Mass (2015), Spotlight (2015), Ghostbusters (2016), Stronger (2017), The Discovery (2017), The Burning Woman (2018). She recently was a beginning student at The Groundings School of Improv in LA. Currently, she performs with The Improv Prophets, LaLaLa Improv, works in film, is developing new work, and studying clowning with Nose to Nose.

Billie Jo earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University, specializing in leadership and creativity, which included an intensive study of ethnographic filmmaking. She worked at Harvard in the field of international education development. As a founding member of Harvard's Project BRIDGES, she helped write and win a grant from the United States for International Development for projects in 12 developing countries. She also worked on Harvard President Rudenstein's Mind, Brain, Behavior Initiative developing innovative undergraduate curriculum that aims to increase mind–body understanding. Also at Harvard, she was fortunate to work on several mind-body medicine projects including a research project in China working with Qi Masters (funded by the MacArthur Foundation on Mind-Body Interactions) and with the Mind & Life Institute, which involved meetings and research with the Dalai Lama in India. Students have called her an "exceptional and knowledgeable teacher."