Yoga was well represented at this year's New Zealand Exercise Industry Awards. Justine Hamill of Wellington's Awhi Yoga won the prestigious Mind Body Instructor of the Year award, and Christchurch yoga studio, Adapted Yoga and Pilates won both the Studio of the Year and the Supreme Facility of the Year, beating local and international gym franchises to take out the title. They are the first yoga or pilates studio to ever win this award. Mind Body Instructor of the Year Persephone … [Read more...]
A Review of the Valka Yoga Cork Yoga Mat: Non-Toxic & Eco-Friendly
The Elephant Cork Yoga Mat from Valka Yoga. by Lucinda Staniland, As the editor of a popular yoga website, I receive a lot of requests to review various yoga-related products. Over the years, this has resulted in me getting a lot of practice at the all-important skill of saying ‘No’. I’ve learned the hard way to only say yes to doing a review when it’s a ‘"hell yes!" Thoroughly testing a product and writing a review takes a significant amount of time and energy and there’s nothing … [Read more...]
Nominate your Favourite NZ Yoga Teacher!
Jase Te Patu, winner of the 2018 Mind Body award, with Persephone Singfield by Persephone Singfield, Courage My Love Hey New Zealand – it's time to nominate your favourite yoga teacher for ExerciseNZ's Mind Body Award! True Dedication You may not realise it but hundreds of hours go into making an amazing yoga teacher. It takes true dedication and your teacher will have studied and practiced to get to a point where he or she can hold the space for your transformation within … [Read more...]
Top 10 Best Yoga Articles of 2018
LoveLake Festival – rocking the best hugs ever. Demonstrated here by Jase Te Patu and Luke Tomlinson. Photo by Cameron Sims of Plant Culture. by Lucinda Staniland, In the last days of my 2018 work year, I couldn't shake a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten to do something important... After much racking of my brain and searching of my to-do lists, I decided that I'd just have to leave it and moved on to packing my bags and preparing for a family holiday. And finally, just when I … [Read more...]
A Review of the Hauora Yoga Conference 2018
by Lucinda Staniland, On a rainy Saturday morning in Auckland, I found myself in a packed auditorium, with around 85 yoga teachers and students, and several hundred fitness professionals, listening to renowned international yoga teacher Donna Farhi give a keynote presentation on interoception and kinesthesia. As Donna lead us through ten slow diaphragmatic breaths, the whole audience dropped into deep, yet focused, stillness. There were so many magical moments like this at the Hauora Yoga … [Read more...]
Scott Lyons on What it Really Means to be in Flow
by Lucinda Staniland, Flow. We've all heard about the concept of a 'flow state' - but what is it really? What does it feel like in an embodied sense? And what stops us from experiencing it? Dr. Scott Lyons has an intimate relationship with flow. He's a Clinical Psychologist, a Mind-Body Medicine practitioner, the co-founder of Embodied Flow™ yoga with Tara Judelle, and a voracious learner who has explored many healing modalities. (Seriously, check out his bio - it's off the hook). He … [Read more...]
Hamish Kenworthy on Why He Doesn’t Regret a Single Moment of Opening Up
by Lucinda Staniland, The first time Hamish Kenworthy came onto my radar was in 2016 when The Yoga Lunchbox conducted a search for The Best Up and Coming Yoga Teachers in Australia and New Zealand. We were flooded with hundreds of recommendations from yoga students, but some of the most touching, enthusiastic and sincere testimonials were for one Hamish Kenworthy of Apollo Power Yoga in Christchurch. Hamish's students all described his extraordinary energy, his jokes and sense of humour, his … [Read more...]
Denise Payne on Why She Doesn’t Want Liberation in This Lifetime
by Lucinda Staniland, Denise Payne is a big-hearted yoga teacher with more than three decades of experience on the mat. Most recently, she spent the last eight years in Bali, where she taught at Ubud's favourite yoga studio, The Yoga Barn and also at Bali's most notorious prison, Kerobokan, where she started a yoga program with Myuran Sukumaran, one of the Bali Nine. In today's yoga landscape, Denise has what I consider to be an unusually deep grounding in Yoga, including twenty years spent … [Read more...]
Jennifer Allen on The Dissipation of Expectation in Yoga
by Lucinda Staniland I've never met Jennifer Allen in person, but on watching her video conversation with Kara-Leah Grant, it didn't take me long at all to learn everything I needed to know about her. Google can tell you that Jennifer is the founder and lead facilitator of Jayayoga, a popular yoga studio in Auckland. But perhaps more importantly, and you'll quickly pick up on this when you watch her interview, she has an incredible loving-mama-bear kind of energy, and she's … [Read more...]
Sandey Hoskin & Kylie Rook on Handstands, Creative Sequencing & Showing Up
by Lucinda Staniland Meet Sandey Hoskin and Kylie Rook, two yoga teachers who are committed to doing the hard work of showing up, being seen and constantly learning. They are also part of the team (alongside Fiona Liu) who are leading a brand new 300 Hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training at Om Yoga Studio in Auckland. Sandey has been a teacher of teachers for a long time, and she's been teaching yoga teachers at Om Yoga Studio for the last four years. She's also been busy bringing some … [Read more...]