by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat It's Monday morning and I have a stack of work to do. There's a multitude of emails in my inbox, two Wordpress clients expecting results, my personal website to re-brand, articles to load into The Yoga Lunchbox, numerous tasks for the website, accounts to do, workshops to prepare, classes to prep... The list goes on and on and I haven't even mentioned writing. Which - as you may have noticed in the last few months - keeps getting moved to the … [Read more...]
Why ‘Letting Go’ and ‘Detachment’ Can be Pitfalls on the Spiritual Path
by guest author Peter Fernando, Meditation and Mindfulness I received this honest and moving question a few weeks back: If you have never bonded with your mother and so have never experienced secure attachment in a primary relationship, how can you work with non-attachment? And letting go? When you have never really experienced having anything to hold onto? The first thing I should say is this: I am no expert in this field, so please don't take my word as gospel. I can only reflect from … [Read more...]
The Yoga of Business: Goals, Clarity, Values & Commitment, Part 4
by guest author Jenifer Parker, business owner of Healium, Wellington Consistency Makes It Happen Once you have all of these elements coming together -- a specific, defined goal; clarity around the values on which the business is formed; and a commitment to that goal as a business -- then the only thing that prevents a person from becoming successful is a lack of consistency. I have a friend who set up a yoga studio, hiring other teachers and running a beautiful little business. Things … [Read more...]
From Rock ‘n Roll to mind control, a tale of meditation sound creation
by guest author Jen Hall, of Venture Beyond Ever wondered who the musicians are behind those soothing and relaxing Healing Sounds CDs? Here's the tale of one such musician, a Kiwi boy no less, born and bred in Wellington, one Dave Marrett. Back in 1975, Dave boarded the ‘Oriana’ and set sail for Sydney, chasing a dream ofcombing his natural flair for electronics with his love of music. He'd already done the hard yards, spending years cycling 10km to violin lessons in Upper Hutt. All … [Read more...]
The Yoga of Business: Goals, Clarity, Values & Commitment, Part 3
by guest author Jenifer Parker, business owner of Healium, Wellington Committing to Your Goal Of course, a lot of people have goals, even specific ones with well-laid plans and a great deal of clarity around their purpose, that still don't succeed. Why is this? A lot of people look at goals as rather personal endeavors that are easy-come, easy-go -- like New Year's resolutions. They don't affect anyone but you, right? So, you don't get the goal, it doesn't really matter. You can … [Read more...]
Nadine Fawell shares why Yoga is her chosen faith
by guest author Nadine Fawell, a Melbourne-based yoga teacher, blogger, and author of the yogAttitude cards. She is most interested in yoga's power to heal body, mind, and spirit. I’ve just come back from leading a yoga retreat in Bali. I got on the airplane feeling anxious, for all sorts of reasons: I was about to shoot my first yoga DVD: strong*stretched*serene (which put me so far out of my comfort zone, I couldn’t even see the horizon), I didn’t know whether the hotel would take good care … [Read more...]
The Yoga of Business: Goals, Clarity, Values & Commitment, Part 2
by guest author Jenifer Parker, business owner of Healium, Wellington Clarity Drives the Process As we have all experienced, sometimes goals do not come to fruition even when they are specific. They can be ridiculously detailed and give a clear way to success, but still fail spectacularly. And sometimes -- as many of us have experienced in the yoga world -- these businesses succeed financially, while undermining the very values that we claim to hold and espouse as yoga … [Read more...]
How to answer: what exactly is the energy body?
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...]
The Yoga of Business: Goals, Clarity, Values & Commitment, Part 1
by guest author Jenifer Parker, business owner of Healium, Wellington In recent weeks, numerous blogs around the web have brought up issues around yoga and business. For many, the common perspective is that yoga and business don't mix, and that going into business with yoga not only denigrates yoga but makes it impossible to be a "true" teacher of yoga. My perspective, however, is that by running any yoga teaching as a business, you better embody the principles of yoga in practice, or … [Read more...]
Economically, yoga doesn’t make any sense at all
We've all heard about those wonderful yoga studios delivering fantastic yoga to the community, but struggling to pay their overheads, let alone make any profits. On the flipside of the coin are the corporate yoga studios and centres paying yoga teachers as little as possible in order to maximise profits for the business owners. Somewhere in the middle are the yoga teachers that schlep themselves all over town teaching in community halls, gyms, offices and other studios, with low overheads … [Read more...]