How to answer: what exactly is the energy body?

Energy work

by guest author Elissa Jordan It started with a story about a mouse in a toaster. Our second weekend in Nelson, as part of the Advanced Yoga Teacher Training with Jenifer Parker of Wellington’s Healium, focused on the energy body. Looking back over my notes from the weekend I see the conversation ebb and flow as only appropriate for a weekend focusing on energy. The movement of stories rode one energetic wave after the next - starting with that mouse in a toaster, and moving to a … [Read more...]

How to take your teaching even further – assist!

Assisting trikonasana

by guest author Elissa Jordan As a yoga teacher, over time, a funny thing starts to happen. Walking down the street you stop seeing people covered in their clothes and shoes and hair. Instead you start seeing collections of muscle and bone, alignment and postures carried around in a thin casing of skin. The knocked knees, the hunched shoulders, the sunken chests taunt us. I’ll sometimes mouth the suggestion of taking your shoulders back and down. Sometimes whispering the instruction … [Read more...]

Who knew? There isn’t just one right way to do things. Even in Yoga.

Assisting trikonasana

by Elissa Jordan One of my Dad’s favourite stories to tell about me as a little girl is the one about my favourite word: why? I carried the word with me everywhere until it was a scraggly, worn-out dirt-encrusted version of itself. There’s some discrepancy as to whether or not this was, in fact, my first word. Dad says yes. Mom thinks it was second, after no. Either way, right from the start I’ve wanted to know the why behind things. Not one to be happy with a ‘because I said … [Read more...]

Diving into the flow of Fluid Power

Sculpture on Venice Beach, LA, California

It's day number.... something? on my Prana Flow teacher training with Shiva Rea. The training is at Exhale Spa, Venice, California and the apartment I'm staying in with another student is a short walk along Venice Beach. Ah Venice Beach... like no other I've ever encountered. Shops and cafes on one side... a wide pavement of walkers, bikers, rollarbladers & skaters, dogs and skateboards in the middle... and vendors, musicians, and hanger-ons on the other side. Beyond the vendors … [Read more...]

How the Abundance Yoga and Pilates Studio came to be

Allyson

by guest author Allyson Donnelly Every now and then, I am asked to recall my first yoga experience. The inquiring minds have usually heard transformational stories from some of their favorite teachers and want to hear more… often as though they are looking for the next step in their inspiration to start a practice of their own. Typically, the conversation goes something like this: Eager yogi-to-be: So you really love yoga…how did you get into it? Me: Silence. Eager … [Read more...]

How do I go about becoming a yoga teacher? Part V

Melissa Billington teaching yoga

This is the fifth article in a series which has examined what it takes to become a yoga teacher. This installment is from Melissa Billington, who owns MYOGA in Wellington. Melissa writes: Teaching yoga is a product, or a flowing over, of who you are. Yet Ekhart Tolle writes; If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are—the being behind the human. A field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined. Give up … [Read more...]