by Neal | Jan 12, 2021 | General, Yoga, Yoga Off The Mat
In November 2020, in preparation for her January 2021 workshop in Auckland, Donna Farhi and I talked about resilience. We share the highlights of this interview below in a few shorter extracts.
What is resilience?
Resilience, self-love and care
Resilience and vulnerability
Resilience tools
by Neal | Nov 2, 2018 | Somatic Movement, Videos, Yoga
We’re gearing up for playing more with video – it’s a great medium for showing movement as opposed to a static photo of a posture. There is so much that may be explored in the transitions between postures, in how we flow, in how we move.
by Neal | Jul 26, 2018 | Somatic Movement, Videos, Yoga
I was just hanging out at the studio with my friend and teacher Karla Brodie and we had time to play with shooting a quick movement video – just a couple of minutes. So exploring fluidity and the movement principle of Yielding within a Sun Salutation sequence....
by Neal | Feb 24, 2017 | Yoga, Yoga Off The Mat
Read Helen Elscot’s Report on her experience of teaching yoga in prison ‘Accepting life’s circumstances and making positive change’ We’re inspired by the work of The Yoga Education in Prisons Trust, a registered charitable trust...
by Neal | Nov 24, 2016 | General, Meditation, Somatic Movement, Yoga, Yoga Off The Mat
Surfing the web for inspiration? Here are our favourite online websites, resources and teachings and we hope you may enjoy them too…
by Neal | Jul 29, 2016 | Meditation, News and Events, Yoga
Back in 2005 when I had already been teaching Yoga for a couple of years but was scouting around for further studies and looking for potent teachers, I came across Donna Farhi’s books and was immediately hooked in to her approach … mindful, detailed,...
by Neal | Dec 21, 2015 | Chants, Yoga
On a recent Yoga intensive with Donna Farhi, she taught us a beautiful chant, the Ayur Mantra. This is a mantra for health and nourishment. It can also be practiced with the ancient art of nyasa, a type of mudra practice, where the placing of the mantra on or around the body is said to be beneficial to the nourishment and protection of the psyche.
Each line from The Ayur Mantra maybe accompanied by a Mudra. Donna recently posted this video on YouTube – a great chant to learn …
by Neal | Sep 7, 2015 | General, Meditation, News and Events, Somatic Movement, Yoga
Four highly experienced yoga teachers have joined together to create the Centre for Contemporary Yoga Studies, based in Remuera. With over 80 years of yoga practice and teaching experience between them, Dyana, Karla, Neal and Vincent co-founded the centre with one key...
by Neal | Aug 1, 2015 | Chants, Meditation, News and Events, Yoga
From our Yoga teacher, Donna Farhi …”Recently I taught a weekend workshop on the practice of Yoga Nidra in Hobart, Tasmania. After reading the evaluations from the fifty people who attended, I was struck by how many of the participants commented on their...
by Neal | Oct 27, 2014 | Somatic Movement, Videos, Yoga
I recently came across this cute little video … it beautifully touches on what may be our original motivations for moving out into the world. The beginnings of our movement intelligence may be traced back to our time spent in the womb and our first years post...
by Neal | Jun 4, 2014 | General, Meditation, Somatic Movement, Yoga
A few years ago I enrolled on my second Yoga Teacher Training course for a year at the Yoga Academy Auckland – I was on a mission to learn more about this practice and to equip myself with as much knowledge as I could. If I was going to teach Yoga, then I wanted...
by Neal | Mar 17, 2014 | Yoga, Yoga Off The Mat
Last year I taught a lot of Yoga! So much so that by November I was rather tired, exhausted even. I found that I was way out of balance, working late to keep up with the workload, waking up early when our daughter Tula wakes up. The sleep deprivation was certainly not helping re-gain my vitality.
I felt that my regular classes on Waiheke were suffering somewhat from my tiredness.
I turned up to each class of course but often with only a vague idea of what I would teach. Part of this was actually useful and interesting … how do I teach when I’m under this amount of pressure? Can I improvise class after class?
It was in fact engaging simply to turn up to class and meet whoever walked through the classroom door, and create on-the-fly classes and sequences geared right to these students exactly as they were in that moment.
