About
Yoga liberates us
Welcome to New Zealand’s online yoga magazine, The Yoga Lunchbox – a place to find out more about yoga and connect with the yoga community. Even if you’re not from New Zealand, you’ll still find plenty of great articles to read.
Yoga has has the power to profoundly transform our lives – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It can take us from a place of utter despair to a place of complete joy. The process of yoga is not always easy though, and it always helps to have someone to walk the path with.
The Yoga Lunchbox is part of providing that support for the process of yoga. It offers an online meeting place for yoga teachers and students to come together to share their experience of yoga with each other, and learn from each other.
In the West, many people have the mistaken impression that yoga is just about physically stretching the body. Yoga in it’s most complete sense is the science of life – yes science. A yogi is one who, through direct observation of their own mind and body, experientially comes to know something. And over the thousands of years that yogis have been practicing, there is much that has been learned!
For most of us, yoga postures, or asanas, are the way we first come to yoga. We come because we have bad backs, dicky knees, we’re tight or we want to lose weight. But right from that first class, we often notice that practicing yoga does something amazing to our minds and our emotional state. It calms us down, and brings us to the present. We feel good, and we want more of that.
From this starting point, the student begins to explore other aspects of yoga. We learn pranayama and begin to discern the subtle movement of prana in the body. We learn to love the meditative aspect of asana, and perhaps start our own meditation practice.
Further study unveils the philosophy of yoga, and we are surprised to find that this millenia-old science has a direct application to the trials and tribulations of our life here in the 21st century. We discover that how we behave in the world towards ourselves and towards other – what yogis call the yamas and niyamas -can directly improve our experience of life.
Our bodies, minds and emotions begin to transform – shifting our lives and even the lives of the people around us in the process. It’s here that many of us discover that in order to transform, old ways, thoughts and ideas have to die. This can be a painful and confusing part of the yogic path.
Which is one reason why The Yoga Lunchbox exists.
- It’s here to reassure us that whatever we encounter along the path of yoga, is just part of the process.
- It’s here to encourage us to try more than just asana, to try more than just going to class.
- And it’s here to celebrate the joyful aspects of making yoga a part of your daily life.
With over 200 articles and counting, there are many ways to find your way around the site.
You can search, use tags, browse categories or follow the related links at the bottom of each article.
You can use the Yoga Teacher Profiles to find the yoga teacher closest to you. Or you can use the links on the sidebar to browse other New Zealand yoga teacher & studio websites.
There is no doubt though, that somewhere on this site, there will be something you’re looking for about yoga.
Happy hunting!
Site Founder | Kara-Leah Grant
