by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat One Sunday recently I retired to the beach for 90 minutes to work my way through a set yoga sequence a friend had posted on their Facebook page. It was total luxury. My son was with his uncle, I had no-where to be and nothing to do, but soak up the sun, the salty breeze, and washing sound of the waves while immersing myself in a yoga sequence. I hated it. Oh, not the scene, or the setting, or the child-free time but the sequence. From the … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2014
Should I Tell Students it’s My First Class Teaching?
by Kelly Fisher “Should I tell the students it is my first class teaching?” I get this question often and there are good reasons to tell them and good reasons not to tell them. My personal bias is for transparency and honesty. Being vulnerable and open enables people to do the same. As yoga teachers we're holding space for our students' personal inquiry and experience. While we can't know what goes on inside of our students' hearts and minds or control it, we can facilitate the kind of raw … [Read more...]
How Yoga Trance Dance™ Destroys World Weariness and Opens Up Creative Flow
by Kara-Leah Grant If you know me, you know I love dancing. Always have, ever since I saw Flashdance at age 8, and got hooked on the original Fame TV series. That was me... always dancing. But there was never any chance I could become a professional dancer because I had zero flexibility, plus at age 16 I had a spinal fusion. (I still remember the first day I danced again after that operation... the doctor said three months, I gave it two.) However... life moves in mysterious ways and in … [Read more...]
Suzanne Sterling on Why What You Love is Key to Your Service {video interview}
by Kara-Leah Grant It's that time of year again... the run-up to Wanderlust, which means I get to interview all kinds of amazing yoga teachers. First up in the series is Suzanne Sterling, in part because she's also a founder of Off the Mat Into the World which is running some events in New Zealand and Australia this October (just been) and December. Interviewing Suzanne meant finding out the low-down both about Off the Mat and how awesome it is, and about her and how awesome she is. I … [Read more...]
The Release of Yoga and Body Image: 25 Personal Stories About Beauty, Bravery + Loving Your Body
By guest author Melanie Klein, Yoga and Body Image Coalition. Anna Guest–Jelley, founder of Curvy Yoga and the co-editor of Yoga and Body Image: 25 Personal Stories About Beauty, Bravery + Loving Your Body, and I both struggled with a distorted body image, our perception of ourselves, from early childhood on. In the process, we tried countless diets and experimented with a variety of fitness trends – all of which left us feeling shame, guilt and punishment for the bodies we lived in. Our … [Read more...]
Katy Carter on Why The Space Between is so Powerful {Video Interview}
by Kara-Leah Grant It's that time period between Christmas and New Year's where the madness of the silly season is almost over but the shops and roads are packed. It's that time when our family obligations are usually done, but we haven't quite started our holidays yet. It's that time when the old year is done, yet the new year has yet to start. It's the space between. And a space when Auckland-based yoga teacher Katy Carter has decided to host a five day retreat at Mana Retreat … [Read more...]
How Yoga Helped Me at Every Stage of Life
In celebration of the launch of The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga, I’ve invited some friends and colleagues to write articles relating to the theme of the book’s subtitle: Because yoga is for every body. Sara is an Australia-based writer and I first met her when I asked for volunteers to be Beta-Readers for Forty Days of Yoga. Little did Sara or I know how that was to be the beginning of a strong connection. Sara is a talented writer and courageously faces into the difficulties of modern … [Read more...]
J. Brown on the Three Sensibilities that Shape Our Yoga Practice {video interview}
by Kara-Leah Grant I've been following J. Brown for a few years now, inspired and impressed by the consistent and constant magnifying glass he applies to the yoga world. J. has no qualms about challenging the accepted flow with his articles, calling into question elements of yoga teaching and practice that he finds problematic. But then, J. Brown is an upstart who has always gone against the grain right from the beginning of his career, deliberately taking a different approach from the … [Read more...]