HEALTH+FITNESS
Getting Hooked on Yogi Jay and WholesomeMV
By Liz Lapidus
When you meet Yogi Jay aka Jason Mazar-Kelly, with his flowing red hair, bounding gait and toothy grin, you are immediately drawn into his warmth and wide open personality. You can find him on the mat, teaching yoga classes across the Island, including the Yoga Barn, Slough Farm and at Island Autism. He specializes in Kripalu Yoga with an emphasis on breathing, mindfulness and meditation. And if what you see is what you get, then all of that makes sense.
But then you find out that he’s also a certified public accountant, an affordable housing advocate and board member of the Island Housing Trust, a business teacher at the high school and the co-founder of Wholesome MV, a teacher-oriented, community focused platform to support wellness through a collaborative force on the Island. That’s when you realize that yoga teaches us to look beyond the surface of things, including our own reactions and stories.
And it makes you want to open your heart and mind, because you never know what skills, interests and passions someone might have, including the person practicing yoga next to you or the one teaching the class.
And now you know, you’re hooked on Yogi Jay.
Jason found yoga as a teenager while he was battling with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). He was diagnosed at 12, and until he was 18 he juggled what he calls “the therapy and medication cycle.” At the encouragement of his kind and understanding mother, he tried yoga in college and it stuck. Through yoga, he learned skills to help him overcome his OCD. And from that experience, he carries compassion, understanding and humor to everyone he teaches – in his classes, through private lessons and working with neurodivergent kids.
Jason contends that anxiety can’t and shouldn’t be fixed. He teaches kids to be brave and learn life skills to overcome their anxiety. “Anxiety plus bravery equals confidence,” he says. And he practices that on himself, when he feels anxiety around launching a new program, like Sunset Yoga at Lambert’s Cove, which he curates with a rotating roster of teachers, or Morning Brews and Yoga at Island Autism, which he does to raise awareness for the adaptive yoga he teaches to the neurodivergent community. He thrives on working with people with physical and mental disabilities, because he can create space for them to be seen as they are, not how the world defines them.
It’s hard to imagine what life on Martha’s Vineyard would be like if Jason had let his OCD diagnosis define him.
“I’m a man of many stories,” he says with a chuckle. And that’s reflected on the Wholesome MV website, which lists not just the classes he teaches, but yoga classes taught by teachers around the Island. You can sign up to experience his mobile sauna cold plunge located on South Road, or have his team design a retreat, your own custom-built sauna or a private yoga class for you and your friends.
In working and playing in so many places – yoga studios, Island Autism, the classroom or the boardroom – he finds lessons in all of them, and uses those teachings to help everyone in his orbit see beyond the stories they tell themselves.
“Part of the yoga practice is about resetting and remembering your awesomeness,” he says. “My dharma, or purpose in life, from teaching yoga, collaborating with other instructors or as a board member, is helping people remember they are the awesomeness behind their narrative, not the narrative that plays in rewind in their heads.” Jason also helps people move beyond their narrative, to truly embracing their “awesomeness,” with his mindfulness coaching, both through Wholesome MV and as an integrative partner at The Tick Center at Martha’s Vineyard Medical, where patients suffering from tick-borne illnesses or living with an alpha-gal syndrome diagnosis can learn mindfulness and meditation skills to tackle their new normal.
Jason’s own new normal will come into the world this fall, when he and his wife Casey give birth to their first child. If you want to see that big, beautiful toothy smile, just ask him about that.
For more information, to meet the teachers or sign up for private or open WholesomeMV classes or Events, click: wholesomemv.com