It's not a religion but it can bring peace of spirit and a healthy body and mind. Denise Carter speaks to Cairns yoga teachers.

Yoga is an ancient pathway to unity of mind, spirit and body that began in India about 5000 years ago. Since then many branches have emerged as it stretched across the planet (an estimated 44 schools), which makes it more than a little confusing for the uninitiated.

Most of the physical aspects of yoga, the stretches and bends performed in classrooms across the world, come under the umbrella of Hatha yoga.

“One mountain, many paths” is how James Bryan, program director and a senior teacher of yoga at Cairns’ Knoff Yoga School, explains yoga’s variations.

The spread of yoga has been helped by practising celebrities. We know Madonna does it, Sting does it, even Ricky Martin’s hip swings have something to do with it.

Now it seems everyone else is doing it too. From 80 year olds at stretch classes to babies being lifted over their mums’ heads at mother and child classes.

The elderly use it to keep supple and improve balance, thus preventing falls, while new mums practise to increase their tone, flexibility and stamina, with their babies enjoying the relaxation. For yogi James Bryan, the gift of yoga is a “spring cleaning” of his mind.

He says since starting yoga, he enjoys life a lot more, “not seeing people as the enemy but that we are all in this together”. James practises Knoff yoga, a derivative of Iyengar.

The path emerged for this ex-marathon runner when his trainer added stretching exercises to his routine.

“I felt great after doing them,” James says, and so he sought out a yoga class. From the beginning he loved it. “It just felt like it was the right thing.”

James progressed from learning yoga to teaching in New Zealand. And he has travelled to India for one-on-one instruction with BKS Iyengar, the creator of Iyengar yoga, which focuses on alignment.

Most modern lives are full of stress and it’s not difficult to understand the benefits of taking time out from the daily bustle to connect with ourselves.

Yoga works, James says, by cleaning the mind space and focusing the body. “We speak of the lock and key method,” he says.

“Often the mind is separated out from the body, for example, someone on a treadmill watching television or a person with tight shoulders might be thinking of work,” he says. “We need to insert the key (the mind) into the lock (the body).”

This is done through a combination of body movements and breath. The physical poses of yoga may lead to an emotional release, so don’t despair if limbering up the hips makes you inexplicably weepy. Repressed emotions, from biting your tongue if your boss yells at you to refraining from butchering your boyfriend if he cheats on you, are stored in the body and psyche, and yoga allows them to be released slowly. James says blocking off our emotions requires energy and likens it to holding soccer balls underwater at a swimming pool. “In yoga, you take the hands off the balls so they surface.”

One person who has experienced such a surfacing of emotions is yoga teacher (or yogini) Betty Nielsen. “There is a release sometimes at the heart centre,” Betty says, recalling just once in her years of teaching when it happened in class.

“It was after my mother died, about a month or two after, and I cried,” she says.

Betty has taught yoga for 40 years, a journey that began when she attended a yoga class at Redlynch.

“From the very first class that was it,” Betty says. “I went every Tuesday no matter what, catching the bus from Stratford to Redlynch with my three year old.”

Betty studied with the International Yoga Teacher’s Association and now teaches people of all ages at the Chrysalis Relaxation Centre on Mulgrave Rd, as well as giving classes at a local retirement village.

What yoga has brought Betty is an ability to cope better with life’s challenges, from the trials of raising her children through their teenage years, to the onslaught of illness.

“I survived cancer a few years ago,” Betty says, “and yoga helped”. “I was too sick to do any exercises but I used visualisation and breathing. When I was receiving radium or chemo I was off to the beach or in a forest (in my mind).”

Betty surprised people with her ability to cope mentally. “When going through cancer, everyone expects you to get depressed,” Betty says. “But I never did, I knew I was going to get better.”

Tina Taylor, a teacher of radiant light yoga, has used yoga therapy on people with terminal illness. “We use the energy of Savasana (the corpse pose) for relaxation and deep healing.

“It has rejuvenating effects, it slows the breathing and lowers blood pressure.” It was at a fitness centre in Brisbane where Tina first encountered yoga in an experience that transformed her life. “I did one class and I knew in my heart I had to teach,” the former environment department advisor says.

Yoga is, for Tina, a way of life. She says it brings her to a “beautiful place” and its benefits are not limited to the yoga mat but extend into her daily life.

“I’m more mindful of the seemingly unending vacillations of the mind,” Tina says.

 “I now have the capacity to engage the thoughts that support me and am aware of the thoughts
that undermine me and my experience of life.”

Tina will teach her yoga, which she describes as flowing and fluid, at Genesis Fitness Centre from the end of July.

Yoga not only helps maintain mental health but it has benefits for people with mental disorders.

The Knoff school’s James Bryan describes our states of mind as points on a continuum between two extremes.

“People who have a mental disorder have a mind that is always churning. They may be in intense conversations with themselves,” he says. “On the opposite end, for example, the Dalai Lama’s mind is calm like a pool of water. We are somewhere between these two points.”

Sun salutations and vigorous breathing exercises helps sufferers of depression, while long forward bends and meditation benefits anxiety disorders.

The mere mention of yoga practitioners may cause the stereotypical image of lotus-sitting teetotalling vegetarians to flash on the inward eye. Flexibility is often a by-product of practice and is not a prerequisite, while abstaining from alcohol and meat is not a requirement.

However, one of the fundamental principles of yoga, is Ahimsa, which means non-harm.

In practice, when there is a choice in life, yoga practitioners are taught to choose the path that causes the least harm. So, for some, this will extend to not eating meat and for others it is cutting down on alcohol to prevent injury to the self.

James says typically his students will progress to health before going off the rails and drinking heavily.

“The next day they will feel worse than ever before in their past,” he says. “It might happen to them two or three times more before it hits them that it is not healthy behaviour.”

I ask tentatively if there are any disadvantages.

“It is a discipline,” James says, “so it does require you do it. It takes effort, persistence, dedication and you will come up against your limitations.”

Ahh, I knew there had to be a catch.

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