There are a number of reasons why I have chosen to undertake this yoga teacher training course. Firstly I would like to develop a strong foundation in my understanding of the practice of the asanas.

Over the years of practicing yoga I have been subject to a number of teacher and different methods of teaching. As is common practice I have been adjusted often however not always with insight and gentle spirit and often as a result of incompetent instructions given in regard to entering the pose-as a result I often hold tension when I am practicing because I am not sure if I am doing it correctly.

I would like to have a strong understanding from Byron Yoga Centre of what is expected in each pose so I know what I am doing and can heal the tension and fear in the mind and find rest in the postures. It is very rare for a yoga teacher to give you credit when a pose has been performed correctly-I know that in the Iyengar tradition teachers are actively encouraged not to give praise to avoid building up the practitioners ego-however the opposite side of this method is that it can create uncertainly in the mind of the practitioner.

Secondly-I am hoping to gain enough inspiration and motivation to develop my own daily practice-yoga, pranayama, meditation and prayer-seems that for me one of the greatest challenges in life is to ‘to get up in the morning’.

Thirdly I would like to have the assurance of mind in teaching the asanas that I as a teacher am giving clear directives and insights-over the past couple of years I have been asked to teach Yoga and although I accepted the request, I wasn’t comfortable teaching when I didn’t have some from of accreditation or solid training from one teacher.

Fourthly I am hoping that by adding this accreditation to the list of practices and skills I have already, namely music and mandala art therapy/meditation-I will be able to further my work in the fields of personal and community development and link in with other practitioners. I am particularly interested in working with marginalized and socially disadvantaged groups such as Kooris, people with a mental illness, and women in prison.

Namaste
M.Gibb

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Purna Yoga – Making Yoga Complete

The yoga taught at Byron Yoga Centre is called Purna, meaning integrated or complete. Purna Yoga represents a holistic approach to yoga integrating not just the physical postures but also philosophy, meditation, pranayama breath control and the yogic personal and social code of ethics.

Purna Yoga Level 1 DVD

Click here to view the five minute intro for the 90 minute DVD of Purna Yoga Level 1 sequence, instructed by John Ogilvie, the founder of Byron Yoga Centre.

Filmed in the beautiful yoga shala of the Tallows Beach venue where we host our Teacher Training Intensives and Retreats in Byron Bay, this DVD demonstrates the postures taught in our Level 1 teacher training courses.

The DVD is required course material for students enrolled in Level 1, to become familiar with the sequence in preparation for the course, it’s also a great beginner level DVD to guide you though a practice at home.

Click here to buy your copy of the DVD online.

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I am English, 32 and left home when I was 18 for a “short” yacht delivery. I found my way to the Mediterranean and was introduced the Super yacht industry. Since then I have worked on my different kinds of yachts around the world and put myself through all the courses and thing needed to hold a Class 4 commercial Captains license to 3000t and a dive instructor’s license.

The first time I did yoga was about 5 years ago and I was hooked. Unfortunately, because on my lifestyle I have found it very hard to do more than sporadic small bursts of yoga since that time.

My few attempts at doing yoga on the yacht never worked well. The motion, travel, confined spaces and constant traffic of the people through any area as well as my own lack of discipline made it seem impossible.

14 years on the sea and constant travel has led me to a longing to have some time to myself, to settle down and to finally have to opportunity to embrace yoga. I think this opportunity has come at the perfect time in my life. It gave me a great the strength to resign from my job, career and love and chance to reinvent my life.

There are many things I hope to get out of this course and the list grows with every new day at school as I fully begin to understand all the Yogic lifestyle has to offer me.

I am so happy to be here and have been made to feel so welcome in the Byron Yoga Centre family even if is only for a short time. My one hope is that I can give something back to everybody at the school who is helping me on my journey.

Tiggy

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The yoga teacher training course has more than meet my expectations it has been wonderful. The first two weeks were emotional for me, but I had a big release and feel so cleansed and so safe, I would love the opportunity to stay and learn more.

I am amazed at how much everyone especially myself has grown a lot of what I have learnt here I will take with me and use in everyday life, it has been a wonderful spiritual journey which I did not expect and I think is the first time in my life that my soul feels right, thank you so much for having express my gratitude! Thank you.

J.Flowers

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Since discovering yoga one year ago, I have always wanted to develop my personal practice by enrolling into a disciplined intensive course to maximize the benefits within a defined timeframe. This is partly due to the remoteness of Coober Pedy and also because there are no active fitness programs up and running (yet!) in town.

Inadvertently, upon the community hearing of the news that I was contemplating this course, local council took initiative to raise interest within the community with the result being overwhelming; with sponsorship, venue discounts, individual donations and encouragement!

Due to this, I intend to fulfill a local program to provide classes in Coober Pedy upon completion of this course. I am now enjoying the holistic approach and my focus is to be a confident, warm-hearted teacher armed with enough knowledge to commence and maintain a practice in outback Australia.

Before beginning the course; my focus was solely asanas. Now I have keen interest in the following:

1. Meditation/ Pranayama  (personally challenged in this area)
2. Nutrition (to maintain a strict sattvic diet and knowing how to combine food combinations to extract the most nutrition)
3. Philosophy
4. To enjoy the NOW!

Thank you for providing this opportunity as my changes within thus for have been immense!

ILIAS.KATSAPOOIKIDIS

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I am now in Tiruvannamalai  a town in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu famous for its holy mountain Arunachala, a place of pilgrimage, and the Ashram of the great Sage Ramana Maharshi. I’m with Christine (Byron Yoga Centre Retreats manager) and Stephan (Byron Yoga Centre Meditation and Philosophy Teacher).

We’re attending daily lectures about Vedanta with a Vedic teacher and small group of keen students from different countries, all drawn to the sacred culture of India.  I’ve also been teaching two yoga classes each day at the Arunachala Yoga Centre.

One of my students there is the headmistress of a school in a village nearby. Her vision was to create a learning environment where children from all backgrounds, faiths and parts of the world can learn and play together.

She invited me to teach yoga to the children. I was up for the challenge and after some dogs, birds, frogs, snakes and lion postures, of course all accompanied by their animal sound, it was the first time I introduced meditation to a group of 5 to 10 year old students.

I started with brahmani breath, which is the bumble bee breath, and combined this with a mudra (hand gesture), just for one minute and finished with the chant of om, it’s very easy here in India, spiritual life is so natural for young and old.

During the resting pose savasana we went on a guided meditation, riding on a magic carpet. I was concerned that some of the kids wouldn’t manage to stay still, but it was no problem. I instructed them to breathe in all kind thoughts and imagine breathing in a golden light, then to breathe out all unkind thoughts, everything they don’t like and imagine that it all leaves the body with a black color. The experience seemed well received – the teachers participated and liked it as well!

To all of you yogis and yoginis Om shanti from Tiruvannamalai

I hope to meet you on retreat in Byron Bay when we return in January.

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The teaching staff at Byron Yoga regularly attend other courses and workshops to continue their learning and share this new experience with their students.

Gitam Garden, who looks after course enrollments at the Byron Yoga Centre, recently completed the ten day intensive teacher training program and now teaches regular classes. Gitam shares her recent experience with Donna Farhi, a teacher of great renown.

Recently I had the great good fortune to attend a Donna Farhi yoga workshop on spinal integration in Adelaide.

I have to admit to a certain nervousness about participation, I have heard stories about Donna’s manner. The friend who had introduced me to her work and previously attended a workshop, described Donna as a person who did not suffer fools, and would give them ‘that look!’ I resolved not to open my mouth for the entire five days!

Right from the first two hour introductory session, I was captured by Donna’s presence. Her physical form is tiny, but her energetic presence is everywhere, and her light and graceful way of moving on the earth was a joy to behold. I asked a good many questions, and never once saw ‘that look’. In fact I felt only friendship and loving energy from her, and a deep, deep passion in the exploration of movement of the body.

Its hard to put the experience into words now, I can only say that I learned so many little things about being in my body and connecting to the earth. Since the workshop I have begun to assimilate them into my practice, and slowly into my teaching style.

There were about 30 participants at the workshop, mostly from the Adelaide area, although I met a lovely woman who had come from Perth, and one from Lismore, and I saw yet another arrive back at the Gold Coast on the same plane as me.

An added bonus for me was that my daughter Sita lives in Adelaide, and I stayed with her and got to spend the evenings being mum, an opportunity that doesn’t come so often these days.

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The poet Rumi puts into words the things that can’t be thought with the mind; the joy and beauty of an open heart and the experience of  emptiness and quietness that comes from dhyana (when the meditator is not conscious of the act of meditation, but is only aware that s/he exists).

Rumi was a thirteenth century Sufi poet and he writes of love and surrender in a way that touches my heart so deeply. I totally feel him! Sometimes after sitting I read a poem or two – his words have a way of dropping into the stillness and just landing perfectly in my heart.

I wanted to write about the turning point in my practice.  When I started to move beyond the body focused discipline of asana and gradually turned my attention inward. I wanted to write about the stillness. It’s really hard!

Pranayama (breath control) really helped to cultivate a calm and quiet mind. I practice Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) daily because it’s really amazing for concentration.  It focuses and directs the attention internally, allowing awareness to settle on the breath, then I can move toward pratyhara (withdrawal of the senses) and letting go.

I practice insight meditation at the moment, contemplating the nature of things, whatever is arising in the moment – ‘choice-less awareness’. As my mind gets very quiet I begin to experience the stillness underneath the breath. I try and revisit this stillness everyday. 

Sometimes when it’s very quiet I experience the sound of silence.  The Buddhist teacher Ajahn Sumedho talks of “a high frequency sound, a ringing sound that’s always there… when you begin to hear that sound of silence, it’s a sign of emptiness – of silence of the mind”. So a lot of days this is my anchor. It’s a silence that I crave and that is always there.

That’s what yoga practice teaches me. That I have already arrived. I’m already home, I just need to wake up from that trance/dream that this is not so. Practice helps me to wake up and live fully.  It’s so beautiful.

Quietness 
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the other side. Die,
And be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
That you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
From silence. 
The speechless full moon
Comes out now. 

Rumi 

Written by Davina Kruse, one of the Byron Yoga Centre Teachers

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It’s  amazing how circular one’s life can be.  I find myself,  after some 14 years have elapsed since I shelved my ‘previous life’ as an academic, specializing in Japanese feminism, inadvertently exploring elements of this same subject area, in my current ‘incarnation’ as a yoga teacher.

On a recent trip to Japan conducting my prenatal and postnatal yoga teacher trainings the realization hit me that the pieces of my life were all coming together to create this moment. 

I have always been passionate about socio-cultural studies and women’s issues, and having completed an honours degree in Japanese, it seemed a natural step for me at the time to embark on my PhD focusing on the area of Japanese feminist literature.   However, life got in the way, and I soon stepped out of the academic ivory tower into the maelstrom of the working world, which then of course, as happens, took several meandering paths to bring me to where I am now:  a yoga teacher, specializing in women’s health.

So, here I am, almost 15 years later,  sharing with eager Japanese women my philosophies on yoga and a natural birth.  The women in Japan that I met are hungry to know more about the Western view of an active, natural birth.  And I was flabbergasted to discover that women there are still generally expected to birth in the very disempowering position of flat their back, their feet in stirrups, following every instruction of the medical establishment without question.

For me this was indeed an ‘aha’ moment.  I could see that I was fulfilling some unwritten plan for my life. My dharma was cleverly intertwining the different strands of my life to bring me this point where I could share my passion and experience of both yoga and women’s health, within the very culture that I had studied for so many of my younger years.

Ain’t life sweet!

Written by Ana Davis, Bliss Baby Yoga

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I am so blessed to have the memory of my work with you during the Bliss Baby Prenatal & Postnatal Training and wanted to give you a bit of an update…I am currently 24 weeks pregnant, and am having a baby girl!! We are both doing very well and healthy, and she is growing more and more every day! I definitely feel the weight of my growing belly now, a lot heavier than a yoga block strapped around your tummy!! Baby and I are keeping up a daily practice of Asana, Pranayama, and Meditation, all of which I am finding to be amazing!!

The things that I learned from you have heavily impacted my decisions in pregnancy, from the changes in my asana practice, to my labour and birth choices. I have chosen to have the baby at a Natural Childbirth centre in Auckland, with the assistance of my husband and a midwife….

I am working with a lot of standing, grounding poses, in preparation for the birth in December…you are right, it does feel like training for a marathon! I am so grateful to have had the time with you in Byron Bay before this all happened.

I am also teaching some prenatal yoga at the moment at a studio in Auckland. It has been not only relevant, but so fulfilling to be surrounded by 15 other women going through the same things that I am. I am channelling you a lot during my classes, and hearing your voice in my head as I guide these women through their practice. I know now that this is truly my calling, and am working on getting my own business off of the ground here in Auckland that specializes in yoga for women in all cycles of their life

J.Allen
BYC Graduate and Bliss Baby Prenatal & Postnatal Training with Ana Davis March 09

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