From Burnout to Balance with Laura Alpe

Today on Nurturing Educators, we’re joined by the wonderful Laura Alpe, founder of Aura Wellbeing. Laura is a te reo Māori-speaking educator, remedial massage therapist, yoga lover, and new mum, who brings authenticity, warmth, and wisdom to everything she does.

In this honest conversation, Laura shares how her journey into teaching began through her deep love for te reo Māori and how early burnout completely redirected her path. She talks about the moment she realised she wasn’t okay, the courage it took to step back, and how massage therapy and yoga became powerful tools in her healing.

We explore the well-being challenges teachers face today: constant emails, digital overload, and blurred boundaries. Laura offers practical advice on switching off, setting limits, and tuning into what your body needs throughout the day. She also shares how motherhood has reshaped her routines, encouraging more flexibility, creativity, and self-compassion.

We dive into the power of community, why asking for help is a strength, and how mindfulness supports teachers to reset, reconnect, and show up with more presence. Laura also talks about her te reo Māori yoga offerings, her YouTube channel, and the simple practices educators can use to find calm between classes.

Finally, Laura gives us a glimpse of what’s next—returning to massage therapy from her glamping-tent studio, future plans for a sleepout, and continuing to support her community in a way that aligns with her values and whānau.

If you’d like to learn more or book a massage, visit https://www.aurawellbeing.co.nz/, and teachers, enjoy a special discount.

Settle in and enjoy this beautiful, encouraging kōrero.

Hosted by Debbie Ross
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For more information, guest recommendations, and sponsorship opportunities 
or to chat, please email: nurturingeducators@gmail.com or visit  www.nurturingeducators.co.nz

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Debbie: All right. Welcome, everyone. Today we get the privilege of having Laura with us. So lovely to have you here. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Laura: Yeah, Kia ora Debbie and Thank you, Debbie, for that well welcome. It's so nice to be here. My name is Laura Alpe. I am Westie, West Aucklander, born and bred. Nei Pakeha and currently living in Glen Innes in the East side of Auckland. I'm a mum of one six month old. Cool. And I'm a geriatric mum, so I'm loud and proud about being an older mum. I'm a maori medium school teacher soon to cross over into the mainstream with garden to table teaching next year. I'm excited about that. I'm also a message therapist remedial massage therapist. And I dabble in yoga learning and teaching. And that's about me.

Debbie: Awesome. Sounds like you've got a wide range of talents and abilities. Very cool. And would you like to tell us a little bit about how you got into teaching?

Laura: Yeah, great question. My mum was a teacher. She's just retired. And so I never wanted to be a teacher. Like, a lot of us, I guess. And I put it off until my late 20s. In fact, it was never part of my plan, what happened was I stumbled into learning Ted El Maldi first. in my late 20s and I did two years of full immersion and I just fell in love. It was like I was intoxicated with this beautiful language and this warm welcoming world, and I didn't want to leave it. So I brainstalled my options of how do I stay in this Māori speaking world as a piha. And it was either a priest, nope, Hang out on the mudai, don't have a mudai. or go into teaching. So I enrolled in a Māori specialised teaching degree at Auckland Uni and three years later came out as a qualified Maldi medium school teacher and it's been about 10 years. I've been working in space.

Debbie: How fascinating. And then how did you kind of transition over into the we-being space?

Laura: Burn out. All too common among teachers, isn't it? Yeah, which actually happened really soon in my career, about three. Oh, no, I'm going to say two years in. I didn't know what it was. I didn't have a name for it. All I knew was after the school holidays, I came back from the school holidays and you know how you should feel like refreshed and ready to go. And I was just exhausted. And one weekend I just thought, I don't know how I'm going to get through the year. And about halfway through the year, I realised, oh, look, I just can't carry on. I'm I'm not well, I'm not mentally well. And my counsellor suggested that, why don't you just take next year off? And yeah, it took me a while, and I finally, you know, put my hand in my notice in, and it was the best feeling ever. I had the last term of just a weight had lifted, and I was really present with my students because I knew that there was a light at the end of this crushingly dark tunnel. So, yeah, so at the end of that year, I didn't know where I was going, what I was going to do, but I just trusted that something was something good was out there for me. And I stumbled across this massage course through Wellpark College of Natural Therapies, which doesn't exist anymore. Sad. And I did a six-month massage course, which completely changed my life and was very healing for me on a physical mental con spiritual level. enabled me to just slow down, look after myself, tune into myself, what do I need, and just recover from the relentless, adrenaline fled pace of the teaching job? And when I finished that course, I went and I studied yoga in India for a crash course, a one month intensive. And when I came back, I thought, right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to start my business. So I started.. Yeah, I started my business at the end of that year, and I did go back to teaching part time the following year, while also running my business. So it's been been a bit of a hybrid, kind of. journey for me. Yeah.

Debbie: And how did you kind of juggle the teaching and the business?

Laura: So I went back to my old school and I kind of convinced them to create a job share position for me, Awesome. which, to their credit they did and they're really accommodating. So I did three days a week and shared the role with another beautiful woman. And I literally started up messaging one day a week. I think it was a Saturday. And then I had the other two days to kind of do the admin and have a rest day for myself. Great. So it was really really great. And as many of you know businesses take a while to build, so it took a little while, but slowly and surely we got to the point where I was working three to four days massage while also teaching. Two to three days, so it's quite full on. I'm Busy. Yeah.

Debbie: So now you're a mum, is that right?

Laura: Yeah. said before.

Debbie: So how do you kind of juggle the demands of being a mum and teaching? Or if you drop teaching while you' business owning.

Laura: That's like a million dollar question that I'm yet to figure out because I'm just about to finish up Matt leave. Six months of mat leave, I would have loved longer, but living in Auckland's expenses.. So I'm heading back to Massage and yeah, well, we shall see. We're involving my partners, Varano in the max to help with childcare, which is amazing because it really does take a village. And if it was just up to me, my partner and our baby, I think we'll all slowly go insane. Yeah.

Debbie: No, that's cool. I love that. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned throughout this stage in your life? A bit of a loaded question.

Laura: It's such a big question. I think one of the huge lessons for me in recovering from Burnout was to just tune into my body a lot more and take pauses throughout the day. I don't know if I have ADHD or if I'm just driven by this internal motor, but I tend to make a to-do list and then do this thing and then go onto that thing and then go onto that thing. And before I know it, I've been five hours nonstop, just running around like a headless chicken. and not looking after myself. So that's something that yoga and massage has taught me to just, when I notice that everything feels urgent and frantic, just stop, pause, take a breath, connect with myself. What does Laura need? in all of this? And then life gets a little easier.

Debbie: That's such good advice. Yeah. Yeah. Really important to just stop when you are feeling overwhelmed. Yeah. How's motherhood changed your perspective on well-being and self-care?

Laura: In some respects, I am grateful for having experienced burnout before this stage, because I know there's a lot of parent burnout and mum's mum burnout. Because it's such a never-ending job. A little like teaching. You never get to the end of the day and go, well, I'm finished, good, I can just clock off, because there's always unfinished business. So I think. in some respects, it's just reinforced the lessons I learned. And in that, if I'm not well, and if I'm not looking after myself, then my baby's gonna suffer. So on the practical, it might look like baby's a little bit grizzly, but I just need to put them down for a couple of minutes. So I'm go to the toilet. Yeah. Or have a shower, you know, or I can just finish my breakfast so that then I've got the fuel to cater to his needs. Yeah. Because if the reverse happens, then I'm going to run our steam and then he's going to suffer. So But then it's also changed things in that I had built up these great routines, like the morning routine, wake up at five, do my yoga, do my meditation, do my journalling, whatever. Yeah. And now my morning routine is, baby wakes me up, I'm awake. So I think I'm having to be a lot more creative and flexible with my self-care. And then be okay about, maybe I've skipped a day and I haven't actually done anything for myself. Oh, I'll start again tomorrow. Yeah. You know? So, yeah, a bit more grace.

Debbie: Yes. So important. What do you think are some of the common well-being challenges that teachers face these days?

Laura: Email? Like having beings constantly connected. So I look at when my mum was teaching and I was a kid, the internet wasn't around, so she'd have papers that she might be marking, but that was all offline Whereas these days with the internet, we're kind of, we're not expected to, but maybe we expect ourselves to be working outside of school hours. So whether it's on our phone, checking our emails, while we're out shopping with the kids or whatever, or getting a notification or you're part of a teacher's WhatsApp group and you're getting notifications at 11:50 p.m. It's kind of got no place in our personal and home lives. It's got no place, so our bedroom. You know, it's got no place when it should be our time with our kids or our loved ones. So that's a huge challenge that if we're not careful, it can just infringe on all specs of our life. Yeah. Yeah, those are the big ones that I can see. There's all sorts of other things like just poor boundaries in terms of parents coming and giving feedback and it's, yeah, it's very hard not to take that stuff on board, take that home.

Debbie: So what would you recommend for educators to do to kind of set some of these boundaries? Especially for the new teachers coming in and, you know, everything's all ready. So overwhelming.

Laura: Yeah, and I think especially for young teachers as well, who, I mean, I'm an old millennial, so I'm the hybrid generation that remembers not having a phone. So it's easier for me to switch off and forget my phone sometimes or turn off all the notifications or whatever, whereas the younger generations have always had it. So. And then there's also this abundance of teaching ideas, you know, B at Pinterest or lesson plans or all of these great, you know, through Instagram, teachers of Instagram, whatever, there's all these great ideas for teaching and that can feel really overwhelming when you've just got to make a decision and go with it.

Debbie: It's so true.

Laura: So in some respects, it's not just a matter of like turning off the internet. A part of it is, I think years have boundaries, you know, turn off your notifications if you can, take your work email off your phone. It has no place on there. Be selective of whether you're part of a WhatsApp school teachers group or, you know, or otherwise and maybe turn off the notifications and choose when you look at that stuff. So you're in control of that. But as far as the overwhelm of information, it's a little bit like being apparent. It's the same thing. There's an overabundance of information and it can be so hard to know who to trust. So you almost kind of need to make your world smaller and know who to trust, be it your like mentor teacher. Can't remember what they're called anymore. Or you have a trusted colleague at school and you really, you know, trust their opinions. So just seek trusty sources. Yeah. And don't get bogged down by the, you know, the noise out there.

Debbie: Yeah, no, that's so important. So going back to your business, I love that you do yoga intel. Would you like to tell us a bit more about that? Yeah. And where people can find you if they'd like to get more details.

Laura: It was just something fun that started over the lockdowns and it was never meant to be a huge part of my business or anything. It was really just an offering to the community when we were all locked in our houses. And part of it was a chance for me to connect with my community and support students of te reo because I'd once been, and I still am a student of te reo. So yeah, so I started a YouTube channel and you can find me on te reo Yoga, I think that's my name. And I've just got some short little classes on there and I've also got some kids' yoga. So teachers might want to try that out in your classroom. Yeah, I' animal yoga to Maori.. So it's visual. We've got these animal cards and you kind of don't need to understand anything. So I'm demonstrating everything. It's just a bit of fun.

Debbie: Awesome. Yeah. I love that. So how do you see yoga and mindfulness in supporting people who work in an education?

Laura: Oh, man. I'll just speak personally. For myself as an educator, I could not do my role if I didn't take if I didn't practice mindfulness. And that sounds a bit woo woo informal, but I guess what I mean is, like what I was saying before, if I didn't stop and pause and take a breath and take stock of actually how am I feeling, what sensations am I feeling? What's happening in my body? What's happening in my environment? You know, the wind, the temperature, that those kind of little daily practises help get help me to get out of my brain, my overthinking brain, and out of my anxiety and back into the present moment. Yeah. And yoga is really just kind of a physical extension of that. It's a physical practice. that is super mindful. It just is so calming is so grounding. And so I'm currently doing a little 30 day yoga challenge.

Debbie: Oh, great.

Laura: to kickstart my practice again because it's being dormant for a while. And yeah, I know a lot of educators whom it really helps to just wind down at the end of a busy day, back into their body, switch off, and then have a great sleep. So love it. I've also been telling a lot of my work colleagues about just doing little mindful breaks during the day.. Brain breaks, just even getting outside for a few minutes and noticing the colours or the, you know, the difference senses and just pausing and having a break. It's so important to just be able to switch off for a few minutes before between classes and stuff like that. Because we as teachers, we're constantly projecting into the future and that's because of the nature of our jobs. We're planning. So even though we have no idea how today's going to go, we predict how it's going to go and we try to stick to those plans. And sometimes it doesn't go according to plans and then we get caught up in, oh, no, that fail, that didn't work, and then the anxiety kicks off. Yeah. And so when we are able, it be mindful. We're able to go, yeah, okay, so that didn't happen, but here I am in this beautiful world, the sun shining on my skin. I can hear the birds. This is what's really important. Here I am kind of nothing else matters in that moment, right? Yeah.

Debbie: And celebrating the small ones too. Like I got through to that student today or that lesson went really well instead of focussing on the things that didn't go so well. It's so important to look at what did celebrate the small ones.

Laura: Gratitude and absolutely. And we're making a difference every day, so that's about remembering that instead of, yeah, feeling like a fraud for having had a bad lesson every now and then or whatever. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah.

Debbie: What advice would you give to other teachers or new mums trying to find balance in life?

Laura: I may have already said it, but it's like, put your oxygen mask on first. Yes. And that self-care is never selfish. Yeah. That if you care about the people around you, you're going to prioritise your self-care, even when you can, which looks different when you have a baby. I'm speaking from mom's perspective. You're not going to be able to do all of the things you could do before, and that's okay. But if you can be creative, if you can be flexible and you can find the little opportunities to, you know, take a little mindful moment here or even a five minute meditation or have a little sleep when baby sleeps, which I know is not always possible. If you can just practice kindness to yourself in little ways, everyone around you is going to benefit. You're going to be more present with them. They're going to feel your love and presence. So, yeah. Those the biggies. Maybe another one as well is not to be scared to ask for help when you need a A. Like what you were talking about before about community and it takes a village to raise a child. That's so connected to that. Yeah. In the first month of our baby's life, we didn't cook a single meal for ourselves because we'd set up this meal train and I'm not shy to ask for support from my friends In whanau and I know some people are. I know for us in the West, it's raised to be really independent and self-sufficient and do everything yourself. But I think we need to challenge that because we're born into this world completely dependent. And I think total independence is a myth and it's not actually healthy. I think we exist in community and we need to be interdependent. It's a really good, healthy thing. And it's hard. It is hard to work through that and as teachers, I think. We're almost like the worst culprits at that because we have to be so capable. We have to deal with so much stress. We have to just think up of things on a dime and pivot all the time, and we don't want to look weak, you know, it could affect our professionalism, we think, but actually, there is strength and weakness. There's strength in asking for help the strength and being vulnerable. And sometimes that's the only way we get through really hard times, so that's a really good point.

Debbie: Yeah, and it's amazing how, like, you know, as teachers, we work with such a range of ages and experience and wisdom, and I think being able to, you know, talk to a colleague when you're struggling or getting support from someone else that's been their dumb match or not necessarily that, but that, you know, has an outsider's view is really helpful.

Laura: Yeah, 100%. And just takes all of that pressure off on you having to come up with the perfect solution, which, you know, to me, it just sounds like a panic attack, waiting to happen. You know, because you don't have all the answers some of the time, so. Yeah. Yeah, community is so important. Yeah.

Debbie: Oh, well. So what's next for you and or a well-being? Any dreams, projects on the horizon?

Laura: Yeah. So I'm currently set to return to massage in a couple of weeks in my Galamping tent, in my bedyard, which is by design because I absolutely love camping growing up and I love being outside and I feel like we don't actually spend enough time outside, you know, sunshine, vitamin D, happiness, all of that stuff. So I'm heading back to that and that's really cool. And I'm also at some time in the next few months, maybe the end of summer, when I have to take my tent down looking at building a sleepout, so I'll be a little more so for my massage, I'll be a little more set up, a permanent situation.

Debbie: Awesome.

Laura: And other than that, I don't have huge world expanding world dominating dreams. What's the word? I can't even think of it. I'.

Debbie: I can't think of it either.

Laura: I edit that out, but I don't have huge empire building dreams for my business, except I really love the fact that I can work from home, I can be flexible with it. It supports me, my Fano, my bubba, at the moment, and that's okay. And yeah.

Debbie: So where can people find you if they'd love to book a massage?

Laura: So I'm in Glen Innis, in the east side of Auckland, and I have a teachers special and I think I have it displayed on my website. I'll make sure it's on there, but it's 10% off for teachers all the time because I love to support us. Yeah. And that.

Debbie: Great. All right. Well, thanks so much for joining me today and sharing your journey so openly. It's really encouraging to see how you've combined your passions of teaching, culture, and well-being and such authentic way. And yeah, if you to our listeners out there, if you'd like to learn more about her work, jump onto her website at or a well-being.co.ns. Amazing. Thank you, Laura.

Laura: Thank you, Debbie. Have a good one.

*This transcript is generated by AI, so there will be errors, sorry about that!