Kara-Leah
I’ve always been a writer, ever since I was eight years old and churning out fairy tales so fast the results were almost illegible.
Fortunately I had one of the Best Primary School Teachers ever, Mrs Logan at Oamaru South School.
She took my scribbles and transcribed them into neat teacher’s cursive so all my classmates could read about Ralph and his Grandmother’s dragon.
Since those heady early days of published fiction, I’ve written all kinds of things – news, articles, PR, newsletters, screenplays, speeches – everything but a book.
But it was stumbling across the magic of WordPress and it’s ability to turn even a novice webby into a publisher that seriously ramped up my writing.
It meant I could publish my own work, find my own audience, and develop my own voice in the -gulp – full glare of the public eye.
You are now reading the result 
And as you may have guessed, yoga’s been pretty important in my life too.
In fact, yoga’s totally transformed my life. I can hardly remember now, but ten years ago I was in serious daily agony with major back issues. My right foot was half numb, I walked with a limp, and I was headed straight to surgery for yet another spinal fusion.
So not cool.
Yoga was one of the tools that over time, with patience and persistence, healed my back. No more limp, no more numbness, no more surgery.
It was probably inevitable I’d end up teaching yoga – I was the child of two teachers, a teenage dance teacher and math tutor. Teaching was just in my blood. And in the end, I didn’t have much choice in the matter - one day our yoga teacher didn’t show up, so I stepped up.
Five years later, here I am, running my own yoga magazine with help from an awesome yoga community, and teaching yoga.
It’s a dream life actually, made all the more sweet by my toddler son, Samuel.
We live in a beautiful house with three out-standing flatmates and stream running past our lounge.
The sound of the water lulls us to sleep, the garden is a’flutter with bees, crickets and butterflies and we have regular visits from the three chickens who live next door.
Yup, living in Wellington, New Zealand is like living in Paradise!
Much love,
Kara-Leah
The following is an extract from a film by Josh Brown and Dee Carran, Fit for Life, Diploma in Film and Television, Aoraki Polytech. Filmed in Dunedin, September, 2010.
