Bay of Plenty Yoga Teacher Radhe
It’s my pleasure to introduce another Satyananda yogi from around the country. Like many of the Satyananda yogis, Radhe has a long history of yoga, first coming into contact with it in the 1970s.
She’s going to be at the up-coming free yoga day in Hamilton sharing her many years of yoga experience. Radhe is also an admin on The Yoga Lunchbox Facebook page, letting us know what’s going on in yoga for the Bay of Plenty area.
Congratulations to Shannon Patinkin, winner of the February subscriber competition. A copy of Tyag’s Yoga Nidra CD is winging it’s way to you!
1. What style of yoga do you practice and where do you teach?
Satyananda-style in the Bay of Plenty, NZ – Rotorua, Murupara and Ruatahuna. I also travel to do workshops occasionally, e.g. to the Waikato to Hamilton to teach prenatal yoga with Shraddha Yogic Lifestyle Trust.
2. How did you come to yoga?
My mother-in-law (to be) did yoga with Eileen Whitehead (an original IYTA member) at Epsom Teachers’ College in Auckland in the 1970′, so I attended a class or two with her, and I think I also had an LP record with a class of Eileen’s on each side of it!
3. When did the yoga bug really get you?
When I went to a course in the early 1980s at Aio-Wira in the Waitakeres run by Swami Shantimurti Saraswati, who was then running the Sataynanda Ashram in New Zealand as a branch of the Australian Satyananda Ashram.
4. How has yoga transformed your life?
It has brought enthusiasm, balance and harmony and been my path in life, e.g. I was teaching around 12 classes a week plus weekend workshops in Auckland in the 1990s.
5. What is your home practice like?
I do a very simple practice these days of a combination of asana, pranayama, yoga nidra and meditation.
6. When people ask you, ‘What is Yoga?’, what do you say?
It is often described as union (body and mind; body and spirit) but I see it as both a science for developing good health of the whole person, and expanding consciousness by increasing the level of awareness and detachment through progressive internalisation, selflessness and one-pointedness.
This occurs wehether or not one only practices asana (postures) with awareness or includes other yoga practices as well.
7. What can people expect from one of your classes?
To be stretched, toned and relaxed, including learning simple flexibility exercises (pawanamuktasana) as well as through use of a variety of asana based on more classical postures; there is always some breathing technique/s and relaxation or meditation to finish.
8. What do you love most about teaching yoga?
Seeing people grow and realising that everyone can benefit from yoga.
9. What do you wish everybody knew about yoga?
That it is scientific and not a religion, and that anyone can start to practice at any stage of life and in any state of health (e.g. yoga nidra can be practice by the ill and/or bedridden).
10. What role do you see yoga playing in our world?
Making it a better place to live in, with more spiritually connected souls accepting that they can make a difference and both outwardly and inwardly working together to ensure this.
11. Anything else you’d like to say?
I can be reached through e-mail on radhe@clear.net.nz and mobile 021 139 4369 or 027 392 8220
When my webpage is working (!) the address is www.yoga-anandaradha.co.nz
My Facebook name is Anandaradha Radhe (this is because I couldn’t register with ‘Radhe’ in as both the first and last name, and Ananadaradha is my initiate name, given to me by Swami Satyananda when I became a karma sannyasin in 1984).
Do you offer any pregnancy yoga classes in Rotorua?