Meet Joycelyn Bejar | Health & Fitness Trainer/ Sports Nutrition Coach/ Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joycelyn Bejar and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joycelyn, we’d love to hear what makes you happy.
“Do what makes you happy.” My mother would say to me ever since I was a little girl when we would talk about career and life goals. She never imposed you should do this or that.

Quite the opposite, she said “don’t do it for the money, follow what makes you happy and the rest will follow.”

From then on, every step I took was taken with that in heart and mind. I gravitated towards the things that I was passionate about and left those behind that didn’t move me. I have often wondered if this made it more difficult for me because I didn’t have a strict path to follow. I had to search deep down inside time and again, evaluate where I was standing and the things that did or didn’t make me happy at the time.

“What makes me happy,” you ask?
When I wake up in the morning I can’t wait to train.
This is my passion. This feeling is what carved out my path. For all that it has brought me mentally, physically and spiritually is as much as I hope to inspire and share with others so they can feel that too.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
How It started?

When I began this journey, I was just looking to lose some weight. At the time, I didn’t realize that my trainer had set me up with the foundation for eternal youth. He taught me strength training. Strength training gave me the ammunition to battle all the things that life would send. At first I used it as a tool to relieve stress, “workout” whatever challenges life threw my way. I always knew that somehow I felt better after. Perception changed and everything seemed clearer and better. As life went on, I continued to practice the laws of good nutrition (this improves with practice and time). The better my practice got the more changes I saw in me, both externally and internally. Soon my practice became a profession. The human body is amazing and a perfect system within itself. I am privileged for having begun strength training at an early age. By doing this, I have set back the hands of time. I have slowed down the aging process, strengthened and protected my back, increased muscle tone and bone density to prevent osteoporosis, increased my metabolism and lean muscle mass. Hence, the anti-aging prescription and the fountain of youth revealed.

As I learned to sculpt the body, what began as a sport and science became an art form and a way of life.

Though my life didn’t start here. It was my mom, who with severe scoliosis wanted to ensure that I would preserve the integrity of my spine and that my posture would not suffer like hers. She enrolled me in ballet at the age of 4. Through the years, I remained athletic and participated in sports of all kinds, with an emphasis in gymnastics, tennis and competitive figure skating. Through hard work these would be the modalities that taught me discipline and perseverance to achieve excellence.

In 2001, I was fortunate to discover yet another passion in my life, traditional Northern Shaolin KUNG FU and a meditative soft style form of martial arts, Tai Chi. Here I learned the importance of maintaining balance in one’s life. In three years of intense training I earned my black belt and was now armed to kick butt!

Was it easy?

I’ve lost both my parents at the age of 29, then later my sister who with downs syndrome was 12 years my senior.

Over the past 5 years I’ve had 4 surgeries.

I’ve had a labral tear repair and a glute max tendon repair both on my right hip,
Another that led to near death when my appendix ruptured completely but still managed to survive by the grace of God.

Severely sprained my ankle which brought me to this ankle surgery 3.5 years later to reconstruct the ligaments and shave a bone spur.

I acquired these injuries while playing, living and just about everything in between.

I’ve gone through periods of little to no work and having to struggle or juggle just make ends meet.

Along the way, I’ve learned how to recover physically, psychologically and emotionally from injuries, and losses while continuing to train and improve both externally and internally.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned…

The most important element of training through any injury is mindset. You have two options:
1. Wallow in self pity and allow yourself to regress while you slowly recover to your new, lower baseline.
2. See the injury as an opportunity and challenge to correct weaknesses and recover as quickly as possible and come back even stronger.

*This applies to both training and life circumstances.

I suggest number two, seeing as your mindset will dictate how successful your recovery is.

Really there is only one option: STAYING POSITIVE because MINDSET IS EVERYTHING!!!!

As a health and fitness expert my experience has taught me “the Yin and Yang of all things.”  “The secret is cultivating patience while maintaining balance. Where there is hard there must be soft to balance the mind, body & spirit for they are all interrelated and one without the other leaves for an unbalanced life.”

What I want the world to know?

There’s another element to this all, I am also a filmmaker and passionate about both. Over time, my two careers have grown side by side and kept me balanced. Not until the pandemic did I combine my passion for fitness with my filmmaking experience to put out images in the universe to share with all.

The most important lesson I’ve learned is finding and maintaining balance is the key to achieving harmony & peace.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would show them the Beach of course.

Born and raised here on Miami Beach and still my favorite place is the beach. The beach for me is a source of inspiration morning noon and night. The morning sunrise for meditation and Taichi, the afternoon for the sun and surf and the evening sunsets for walks or just hanging out. There’s a lot to do in just one place.

For healthy eats

My diet mainly consists of whole foods nutrition. I stick to places that provide fresh tasty healthy eats.

Pura vida, Juice & Java, Mya Papaya, Miami Juice and The Carrot.

And for a special treat the best pancakes can be found at Oliver’s and Eating House, cheat meals of course ; )

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My Framily : ) (not a spelling error)

Gratitude to my parents, family and friends who have supported me along the way.

All the teachers who led, taught, encouraged, guided, pushed and inspired. Especially those who still believed in me when times got tough and giving me the space to figure it out and believing that I would… because of you I did. xo

Website: www.jbefitunlimited.com

Instagram: jbefit.joycelyn

Linkedin: Joycelyn Bejar JBeFit

Twitter: joycelyn@JBefit

Facebook: Jbefit Joycelyn Bejar

Youtube: JBeFit Joycelyn Bejar