Nomadic Yoga Family Give Up Life Of Luxury To Live In A RV

Couple Jenna Rosene and Josh Biro live in a 105 square foot Earthroamer with their two children six-year-old Arjuna and baby Lux, who’s nearly two.

Even though they admit space is tight, the couple say they have everything they could possibly need and they don’t miss the house they used to live in in Red Deer, Canada, because the RV allows them to live a nomadic life.

Josh, 32, said: “The Earthroamer 28 is our tiny living unit. We have been living in this thing for over a year now and it’s been awesome.

“We are family of four so it’s tight, but we have everything we could possibly need.”

Josh and Jenna made the decision to sell their comfortable family home, car and the yoga studio that they owned so they could embrace a simpler lifestyle travelling the world.

Jenna, 33, said: “Travel was definitely part of our lifestyle before, now it’s a permanent part of our lifestyle of being on the road.
“Before we got married we travelled and we really wanted to continue that once we had kids.”

But the reason for the family’s drastic decision to sell up and see the world in a truck is a devestating one.

Jenna said: "We had a daughter between Arjuna and Lux called Zama and she passed away when we were travelling in Ecuador two years ago. She died just before she was two-years-old.

Josh said: “We were travelling in Ecuador and we went to a standard tourist beach to see these archways where there are tons of pictures online of other people going to check out. And that day at that exact moment, only on that one arch, right where we were standing, a rock let go and hit us.

“It hit Jenna and Zama and she was just too little.

“Her passing definitely affected our decision to travel.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the comfort of your routine and I don’t think we were people that lived from fear in any way, but after this experience it just amplified a lot of what we already believed."

Jenna added: “And I think it made us realise that our time here is finite."

Although Jenna and Josh had already decided to pack up and travel with their children, Zama’s heartbreaking death accelerated their decision.

Jenna said: “I was definitely concerned about telling our family and friends, especially grandma as we lived close by. She loved to help babysit the kids.

"We are very close and especially after we had just lost Zama, we were telling them that we were taking our other two kids and travelling indefinitely.

“I know that they miss us, but what helped is that Josh and I were really confident in our decision. We know that we are following our hearts and following a dream.”

Zama would be four-years-old now and is still very much of the family’s new life.

Jenna said: “We love talking about Zama. She was and still is very much a part of our family.”

Photos of Zama are taped to the van’s fridge and every year on her birthday the family throw flowers into water in remembrance of her – in 2015 in the Red Deer River near their old family house; in 2016 in the ocean in Victoria and this year in the Pacific Ocean in Sayulita, Mexico.

Before moving into the Earthroamer, the family lived in a comfortable family home in Red Deer, Alberta.

Jenna said: “We had a house in Red Deer, Alberta. That is where we owned our Yoga studio as well and for us it was like our dream home. It was a cute little old house in the old part of town.

“It was the kind of house we thought we would grow into and raise our kids in. It was close to family, which was great.”

Josh added: “We had the house that we wanted, the car we wanted, a couple of kids and we had our own business. Our son was in the school that we really liked and he loved. So, our lifestyle was very much the status quo.”

Both Jenna and Josh are fully qualified yoga instructors and the pair realised the change they had to teach on the road to support their travel.

Jenna said: “We figured that we have this skill of teaching yoga and owning studios, so how could we put that to work? So we started to contact studios on the road and guest teach.

“Pretty soon they started asking us more questions about owning our studio and the business aspect of things. So that got us involved in offering business coaching for studios on the road as well.”

The family are currently in Mexico – with the children already picking up the Spanish language. Arjuna is homeschooled in the mornings with free time in the afternoon to hit the beach with his mum, dad and sister.

Josh said: “We are kind of doing world schooling, unschooling and travel schooling. But we do believe you still have to supplement that with some actual learning with some specific curriculum details, so we have been doing both.

"Generally speaking Arjuna does a couple of hours of school every day out of a workbook and then it’s more practical learning.

"I feel that’s way more important because that’s about how to live. That’s more about how to actually live in reality than it is what you can regurgitate.”

For now the family have no plans to stop travelling although Josh admits he misses the “creature comforts” of a big kitchen.

“I can still do everything in our kitchen here. It’s just requires a little bit more effort and planning,” he said.

Jenna added: “Sometimes we do feel like we are missing out on certain things from our old life. I know Arjuna really misses having a dedicated bedroom and having the toys and the space to play.”

Despite planning on a bigger road trip, the family have been on the road for over a year and only lived in three countries so far: Canada, the USA and Mexico.

Josh said: “At first we thought we were going to make it from Alaska to Argentina in a couple of years or less. But there’s just lots to see and do and so many great places.

"For me the highlights of our trips so far have been some of the really unexpected places.

“That’s one of the advantages of living this way that we love. If you want to go to the mountain, you can just drive to the mountains. And then if you want to be by the Ocean, you go by the ocean.”