ABOUT
I believe in yoga’s power to enhance your health and wellbeing, and that almost everyone would be better off with some yoga in their lives! Same goes for meditation too.
It doesn’t matter what form your yoga takes, what it looks like, what clothes you’re wearing, or whether you have a fancy yoga mat - the benefits of yoga come simply by turning up to do the practice. Time and again creating some precious time for yourself.
Yoga can offer transformation, each class is one more step along the path. It’s not a short path (like most things in life there are no quick fixes), so it takes time and committing to the practice. That means unlocking the discipline to show up week after week. By putting in the hours you will feel better for it! Be patient and the rewards are there.
We are on a journey together: student and teacher. Therefore my teaching goals are linked with yours. My aim is that you'll leave each class feeling that the work we have done together is helpful and that it makes difference in your life.
I look forward to sharing the tools that yoga has to offer to help you reduce stress, heal your body, embrace who you are, and quite simply, to find a more enjoyable life.
Why you should get more yoga in your life
"Yoga is not about touching your toes, it's what you learn on the way down."
Jigar Gor
Through my practice over the years, I have felt many physical benefits: my lower back has stopped aching, my whole core is stronger, my shoulders hold less tension and I feel strong and healthy overall.
Aside from the physical benefits, I have also witnessed a reduction of stress, self-doubt and anxiety. I’m generally less affected by the fluctuations of the day.
Instead I know myself better, I’m able to be kinder to those around me, and most days (nothing is ever perfect) I feel happy and content in the here and now.
The same is possible for you.
Yoga is a powerful tool to develop inner and outer strength by clearing away the mental clutter that sometimes holds you back.
You can evolve your internal relationship with yourself as well as your relationships with others, changing how you view & move through your world.
"Words cannot express the total value of yoga. It has to be experienced."
B.K.S Iyengar
My yoga studies
Since gaining my first 200 hr yoga qualification in London in 2014, I’ve continued my professional development, investing many hours each year in reading, attending workshops and taking various courses to expand my knowledge of the body and how yoga can bring benefit.
I am well versed in how to adapt and vary the practice, and how to help individual students find more ease and comfort in postures that challenge them.
I am a registered teacher with Yoga New Zealand. Yoga New Zealand is a national registration body for yoga teachers, operating with internationally accepted standards for training and teaching. Registration with Yoga New Zealand affirms that teachers are competent and have appropriate training and experience.
Understanding yoga
Yoga comes from the sanskrit word yug, which means to unite or yoke. But this doesn’t mean uniting one thing with another, it’s more about acknowledging the inherent connection between things. Everything is connected with everything else. And this is one of the all-important teachings of yoga.
Yoga teachings are there not just to help us get along in the world—they are trying to help us transform the way we see it, and the way we exist in it.
Yoga is therefore not just about self transformation to benefit the self. When we more fully consider our actions and choices have impact we understand that how we live and our daily choices make a difference to others and the world around us.
Studying yoga philosophy provides you with an alternative way of thinking about your life, enabling you to be more content with what you have and what you don’t have and to become more comfortable with change.
The yoga texts also provide insights into the natures of the mind that you can use to change your mental habits and behaviour patterns.
Studying the philosophy is as much a part of yoga as any of the other practices.”
'Yoga for Healthy Aging' book
In popular culture, yoga is often reduced to a body practice…this captures neither the mental and emotional aspects of yoga, and crucially, it leaves out the deep grounding it has in ethics.
The popular-culture version of yoga tells us to start practice so that we can get a better body than the one we have now, and so that we can get a better mind.
An ethics-bound practice begins instead by helping us to catch sight of the harmful ways we look at bodies, at the ways we split ourselves between what we are and what we wish we were.”
Michael Stone
