Miz DeShannon
Hey! My name is Miz, I'm a movement teacher from Manchester, UK currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
My Muslim father brought me up with an interest in daily movement, and a healthy interest in my good health - he strongly disliked chemical medicine and believed we could find everything we needed from the earth. He always said to me, that given time, I would understand the tricky things that I faced as a kid, that as I grew the meaning of events would unfold. His words and actions are what gave me an interest in various types of yoga, Buddhism, activism, and investigating what's fundamentally right in the world.
I passed my basic yoga teacher training in 2018, after over a decade of practice. I almost don't wish to call myself a 'yoga teacher' though, because I don't feel I'm traditional enough to authentically use that name, as my teaching encompasses many practices. Over the years, I’ve leaned further into learning more and more about diverse practices and traditions, including: Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qigong, free movement, contemporary dance, Indian martial arts, somatic and nervous system anatomy. My brain just incessantly wants to learn!
I've also learnt a lot about people along the way - cultures, religions, upbringings. My 'day job' often took me to engage with unrepresented and marginalised groups in communities, from young people in areas of poverty lacking in basic skills, to Indian families facing the difficulties of living comfortably in working class Yorkshire. Growing up as a half-Pakistani kid in a small and completely white town I had also faced an amount of marginalisation and abuse, as did my family.
All of these experiences combined, along with my father's power and drive, recently pushed me to do something a little different, beyond teaching yoga within the confines of a class environment - hence the creation of Dharma Things. Dharma Things is a podcast for conversations with various people, who may be well-known because of their creativity or political drive, but also have a deeper story to tell. The purpose of the podcast, is to hold difficult conversations, ask the unasked questions, delve into the feelings and emotions that surround the publicised facts. In creating these episodes, my hope is to reach people facing difficulties in life, so that they themselves feel heard, to help people find solace and comfort in knowing more, and to give everyone the opportunity to be strong.