This week’s interview is with Shelley Fitness. Shelly completed the CY 200-hour Teacher Training in 2022. She is a school principal who somehow finds time to teach two Yoga classes a week – one for pre-teens at her school, and the other for adults at Yoga and Oils Studio in Te Awamutu.
In this interview, Karla Brodie and Neal Ghoshal share their passion for Restorative Yoga with their fellow teacher and our Contemporary Yoga administrator, Sandy Farquhar.
Neal: In essence, Restorative Yoga is a well-being practice. Of course all Yoga may be about well-being. Restorative Yoga is distinguished by the conscious use of props such as Yoga bolsters, blankets, blocks and more, to support the physical body.
A great passion of mine is the evocative use of language to inform Yoga movement and rest practices. A teacher’s use of words has the power to evoke embodied experiences that can be transformational for students.
The use of evocative language in yoga taps into the sensorial body: tasting, touching, feeling, sensing and seeing. Creative language used to innervate movement principles, concepts and anatomy means that a student’s yoga practice emerges from a deep and growing understanding of their bodily world.
Over the early years of teaching yoga I am often asked by students “Am I doing this right?”
I began to question what defined “right Yoga” and then in contrast what defined “wrong Yoga”. I feel it speaks to an ingrained cultural trajectory that values getting better or improving oneself – as if there is something at the beginning that even needs improving.
This self-improvement idea translates into Yoga practice as ‘better’ or ‘good’ by being defined by how complex or bendy one can be and is often accompanied by what one looks like while preforming Yoga postures.
We want to let you know how Contemporary Yoga Teacher Training is meeting these challenging times, and about our policies around upcoming teacher trainings.
As with many trainings worldwide, we are in the process of pivoting a significant part of training to be offered online, with pre-recorded videos, assignments and reflections, as well as live-streamed lessons over Zoom.
Steph Le Gros is a recent graduate of our 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training. Based in Nelson she is a trained health coach, personal trainer, reiki healer and now a qualified Yoga teacher. We put together some sentence beginnings and asked Steph to complete them.
To me Yoga is … the practice that reminded me I had a body. A sensing, feeling, alive body and all the delights that that can bring.
This week’s interview is with Lucy Tofield, a passionate Yogi and Contemporary Yoga graduate. Lucy’s passion for yoga is evident – very recently she organised and facilitated a series of Saturday classes run by recent graduates of Contemporary Yoga at the Centre.
Amy’s passion is Ayurveda which has been guiding her life for more than a decade. Her online module, Ayurveda and Yoga for Women is available from the end of July 2021.
It is my most sincere hope and intention this course may make these deeply nurturing traditions of care more accessible to women, their families, friends and communities, in turn bringing greater well being to women and children.
Emma Parsons completed her 200-hour teacher training with us in January 2020.
She was invited back to support faculty and students on our 2 x10 day training later that year. Emma teaches in Dargaville and Baylys Beach. She has started her own business called Mind, Body and More.
We sent Emma a series of starter sentences and invited her to complete them …
