Sharing A Love Of Yoga Through Learning & Laughter
Hi, I'm Lara...
...and I'm so happy you're here! If your stiff body is threatening to suffocate all your wellness aspirations AND your stressed out brain is inviting you to numb out in any way possible until your overwhelming life becomes a faint memory, you're in the right place. You might think that as a yoga teacher, I must have it all together. But the reality is a bit different. Let me explain...
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I came to yoga over 2 decades ago in my early twenties. I had a terrible mountainbike accident that left me with excruciating neck pain, which nothing seemed to help fix. I started yoga on a whim, and instantly loathed downward facing dog and thought holding any warrior pose for more than 1 second was some kind of sadistic insanity. I regularly walked out of class 10 mins early before relaxation at the end began as it was just too boring / woowoo for me.
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And then strange things began to happen.
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My neck pain vanished. And promptly came back every time I stopped going to yoga. I started to understand that the energetic "stuff" my yoga teacher was always talking about was actually deeply rooted in physics, physiology, biochemistry...the latter of which I was studying at university and would eventually get my Bsc degree in. My head no longer pounded when it was upside down in down dog, and I actually started to *enjoy* holding poses and gaining strength in my body.
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Which is to say nothing of the mental and emotional benefits that I was confused to receive.
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Having always been a passionate Celt, I was a little blindsided to feel a new calmness and groundedness that showed up more & more as I studied pranayama (yogic breathing) and started meditating. These days we know the phenomenon of neuroplasticity in the brain...that the more we wear a groove by doing things repetitively (like meditation & yoga) then the more the brain actually rewires itself to make these new pathways stronger. Of course, like many things we're discovering in the West, this concept was already known in the East - samskaras in Sanskrit is the name for the brain grooves we wear with our habitual behaviours, be they good or bad.
Fast-forward to 2001 and I moved to New Zealand after backpacking through South-East Asia (doing lots of yoga along the way), and then in 2004 I took my 200hr Level 1 Teacher Training with Ashram Yoga in Auckland. I will be forever grateful for finding my home away from home with this amazing niche of authentic teachers still teaching the Classical Yoga ways...it really is the full enchilada of Yoga! I love that so many things I have learnt have been within the oral tradition of yoga from Teacher to Student - meaning: you can't even google most of it...
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In 2007 & 2010 I became a mum, and with that came a whole new level of challenges. Already I was not the most flexible person (let alone yoga teacher) that you could ever meet, but I did pride myself a wee bit on being a strong ex-mountainbiking, rockclimbing, yogini kind of gal. But post-babies, where did my abs go? And more crucially, where the heck did my patience go?
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I'm happy to report that these days, with some serious rejigging of my yoga practice, my core strength has returned, my flexibility while still not being the stuff of legends is very adequate thank you, and hey presto, if I can manage my alternately spicy & sometimes salty temperament with meditation & mindfulness, then anyone can. And I can show you how because I KNOW how from experience!
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I was very fortunate to have the opportunity 3 years ago to become a 300hr teacher after studying for my Level 2 Teacher Training with Ashram Yoga again, especially as it was the last course my late teacher Swami Shantimurti Saraswati took before he passed. Arohanui, Shanti.
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So now with my 24 years of yoga learning and 12 years teaching experience, I'm offering to make you the perfect yoga cocktail. That instead of just getting by, you can thrive & flourish. You can do yoga and receive all the physical & mental benefits, even if you haven't exercised in years, have the flexibility of a wooden plank and feel about as zen as a volcano. You deserve to feel alive and vibrant in your skin and you don't need to do mega punishing workouts or meditate for hours to achieve it. All you need? A dose of yoga, a splash of breathwork, plus some meditation thrown in and you'll be good to go. Come & try it. I feel like you just might just like it too.