Graduate Interview: Sandra Palmer
In this interview, Sandra shares her journey with cancer, offering personal insight into how Yoga supports and nourishes her, and she also talks about the ways in which Yoga’s embodied approach has become part of her therapeutic practice supporting those who’ve experienced sexual trauma.
Graduate Interview: Katie Rudd
This week’s interview is with Katie Rudd. One of our recent graduates, contemporary dancer Katie Rudd talks about the power of Yoga to bring us home to our bodies.
Katie graciously shares her passion for movement with us and suggests that advanced Yoga is doing less ‘with a deeper focus on intention’. We love it – and think you will too, so read on…
Yoga and Cacao: Part 4: Integrating Cacao (conversations with Steph Le Gros)
“I am living today as someone I had not yet become yesterday. And tonight I’ll only borrow pieces of who I am today, to carry with me to tomorrow.”
Andrea Gibson
Closing the ritual is as essential as the beginning. Welcoming in the circularity of the practice or an integrational interlude giving space for all that needs to land, to land. Integrating all that has surfaced and moved you to ‘shape your soul’.1 Think of integrating Cacao as savasana – a closing ritual that keeps on giving.
Yoga and Cacao: Part 3: Learning the Spirit of Cacao (conversations with Steph Le Gros)
Cacao helps us restore and remember our connection to nature, to earth, to the ancestors that have lived before us. And to the ancestors that we are yet to become.
I could write about the history of cacao, of traditions and legends told through lineages of Peruvian tribes. And yet I question whether it is my voice that should be speaking to it.
Yoga and Cacao: Part 2: We are the Ceremony: Practicing yoga with Cacao (conversations with Steph Le Gros)
A cacao infused poem
Inhaling her
aliveness infused through me.
Relief passed along synapses.
Senses awakening.
Present to being wholly here.
Home.
The first sip of the elixir beckoned
Tendrils (of gratitude)
from my pelvis (spine)
to root down into all that is below.
A wave of levity migrating up my spine,
reaching towards the vastness of space above.
Connectedness.
Yoga and Cacao: Part 1: Yoga Meets Cacao: Practices of Homecoming (conversations with Steph Le Gros)
Steph Le Gros is a health coach, personal trainer, Reiki practitioner, and qualified Yoga teacher based in Nelson. In this three-part article, Steph talks about her passion for cacao as an important part of her yoga practice.
She introduces us to yoga and cacao as practices of homecoming; shares a delectable recipe and ritual; discusses the tradition of cacao; and finally shares some of her poetry and practices inspired by yoga and cacao.
Teacher Interview: Michaela Sangl
This week’s interview is with Michaela Sangl – one of the most experienced teachers of yoga for children in New Zealand and the founder of Yogi Kids Professional Development.
Her primary focus is now sharing her wealth of knowledge with educators, yoga teachers, practitioners and caregivers.
Graduate Interview: Madeleine Lifsey
We begin a series of Contemporary Yoga Training graduate interviews. Our first graduate interviewee is Madeleine Lifsey.
Madeleine completed her Contemporary Yoga 200 hour teacher training during 2020. She offers body-positive, rainbow-inclusive, inquiry-based children’s yoga over Zoom on Outschool.
Building Resilience – an interview with Donna Farhi
In November 2020, in preparation for her January 2021 workshop in Auckland, Donna Farhi and I talked about resilience. We share the highlights of this interview below in a few shorter extracts.
What is resilience?
Resilience, self-love and care
Resilience and vulnerability
Resilience tools