Ayurveda, Teaching and Living Your Yoga with Lisa Weller

Overview

Liz speaks with senior yoga teacher and therapist Lisa Weller based in Brisbane, Australia. With over 20 years of yoga experience. Lisa shares how her yoga practice has evolved into a spiritual and holistic lifestyle. Far beyond poses on a mat. Together, they discuss the intersection of Ayurveda and yoga. Adapting your practice to your energy levels. How yoga can support the nervous system during real-life challenges like natural disasters.

Key Topics Covered:

Yoga is a Spiritual and Holistic Lifestyle 

Lisa defines yoga as a way of connecting mind, body, and spirit. And shares how it informs everything. From how we breathe to how we eat and live.

Ayurveda and Yoga Work Hand in Hand. 

Lisa explains how understanding her dosha helped her personalise her yoga. Feel more balanced across seasons, moods, and life stages.

Your Practice Should meet Your Needs. Learn how to honour your body's daily energy by choosing stillness. Strength, or something in between. Without guilt or rigid expectations.

Yoga for Nervous system Support is Real. Lisa recounts how yoga helped her regulate stress and exhaustion. After surviving both floods and Cyclone Alfred. Highlighting tools like breath-work and grounding.

The Importance of Walking Your Talk. Lisa gives advice for people considering undertaking yoga teacher training. Teaching yoga authentically starts with having a consistent personal practice. Lisa shares why it's essential for yoga teachers to embody what they teach.

Yoga is more than what we do on the mat. It's how we live, breathe, and move through the world. In this episode, Lisa Weller shares her personal yoga journey. The power of Ayurveda. How to create a sustainable and compassionate practice. That supports your mental health and nervous system. Whether you're a teacher or student. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of what it means to live your yoga.

About this episode's guest: 

Lisa Weller’s teaching is rooted in the sacred practice of coming home to oneself. Her classes offer a grounded, nurturing space where students are invited to deepen their inner awareness and feel supported. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Drawing from her strong foundation in Hatha yoga, Lisa honours traditional teachings. While weaving in the  wisdom of Yin (Chinese medicine and myo-fascial release), Restorative yoga, and pre/postnatal support. Through intentional, meditative movement and breath, Lisa guides students to explore their unique bodies, honour skeletal variation, and cultivate self-trust. Whether holding a deeply restorative posture or flowing mindfully through asana, her essence is to create space for presence, calm, and deep connection. Beyond the mat.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Trailer
• 2:51 Lisa's Yoga Journey
• 4:47 Yoga is a Way of Life
• 5:51 The Wisdom of Yoga Philosophy
• 9:12 Using Yoga During Cyclones and Floods
• 16:03 Ayurveda and Yoga for Mental Health
• 19:50 Changes in the Yoga Teacher Trainings over the Past 10 Years
• 22:00 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training
• 27:04 Skeletal Variation
• 28:10 Taking Mental Health into Account When Teaching Yoga
• 31:15 Lisa's Offerings including Workshops & Online

Transcript

I always say that yoga is a spiritual practice. Not a physical practice, and it's a way of connecting ourself in mind, body, and spirit. And it's holistic as well too. So, it's not just at the physical aspect of our practices, the way that we enter the practice, but it's not the end of our practice, it's just the beginning. 
It's your whole entire lifestyle. The food that you receive and the way that you take care of your body that supports your yoga practice. But yoga practice also is a therapy to support Ayurveda as well too. So, I think the one thing that really united everything together for me. When I did the Ayurveda training and I learned more about your dosha and about changing your practice to fit. Yoga isn't just your 30 minutes or your 60 minutes on your mat.  
I think that it's important at some stage to create that understanding around that what it looks like from the outside isn't necessarily what it feels like on the inside.  You don't always need for people , to understand but I think it's just that feeling of someone saying, are you okay?      

Welcome to the Inner Fire of Yoga, a podcast about transformation, resilience, and the power of yoga beyond the mat. I'm Liz Albanis, Senior Yoga Teacher and Yoga Therapist in Training. This podcast was born in 2024, after I survived my second fire. Fire has been a recurring theme in my life, not just in the literal sense, but as a metaphor. It has asked me to burn away what no longer serves me, to transform and to rise stronger each time. This podcast is about that fire, the one that challenges us, but also fuels us to grow.

I'd like to introduce you to Lisa Weller. Lisa has been practicing yoga for over 20 years. Lisa is a senior yoga teacher and has been teaching since 2014. Lisa is also a qualified yoga therapist and she's currently based in Brisbane, Australia and teaches there. Lisa teaches Yin yoga, Maya Fascia Elise with Maya Yin Restorative Yoga and pre and postnatal. 
I would say. Welcome Lisa! Lovely to have you here. Oh, thank you for having me. Pleasure. We met, what was it, 2017 at a teacher training here in Melbourne with Jo Fi and then ended up doing another training together with Jo Phee because we love her so much. Yes. The following year. Yeah, we did in Perth. It was great.
That was fun. So, Lisa, can you share with us what first drew you to yoga? So, I think what first drew me to yoga is it was the one place and the one time that I felt like I could really have a sense of quiet in my mind and in my body. I think I came into yoga maybe in my early twenties, and it's at that stage in life where you're sort of starting to like move out of home and to gain your independence and to find your feet.
And then once I finished studying at uni and then I started sort of working in the workforce, I found that I was feeling quite tired at the end of the day and quite depleted. And I knew that I needed some kind of stillness practice, so to keep me balanced. Like I had that feeling that when the work days were quite long and quite enduring.
I felt like I really needed a stillness practice, and I think that's what really, sort of like in the very early days, that's what drew me to yoga was that feeling of needing to take care of my internal world, especially when you're giving out a lot during the day, especially to the five days a week too, was a big shift and a big change to what I had been previously used to.
And what sort of style of yoga did you try initially? I started doing classes at the gym because I had a gym membership and I honestly have no idea what kind of style. Because I, I think back when I first started practicing, there was this yoga on the timetable. There wasn't a particular type or style of yoga.
Like it wasn't so separated as what it is now or so defined. It was just yoga. Most of the yoga teachers were all older women. I would say probably most of them were in their fifties to sixties plus, so they were quite mature teachers as well too. But it was just yoga and they, they taught what they taught.
Yeah, it was, it's changed a bit. A lot of teachers are younger these days, and stereotypes probably changed a bit since then. Then. Oh, absolutely. So well, as you know, talking about stereotypes due to the way yoga has been marketed in the West, it's very much misunderstood. So, if someone were to come up to you on the street or whatever and asked what yoga was, what would be your simple definition?
I always say that yoga is a spiritual practice. Not a physical practice, and it's a way of connecting our self in mind, body, and spirit. And it's holistic as well too. So, it's not just at the physical aspect of our practices, the way that we enter the practice, but it's not the end of our practice, it's just the beginning.
That's a great way of putting it as well. I like that how you said it, holistic and not just a physical practice, which is just so true, isn't it? I do find that most of my students, when they come back to me to tell me about what they felt in their own body, often than not, it's not necessarily the physical aspects that they talk about.
It's the other aspects. You mean mentally and emotionally, how they feel. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Is there a specific part of yoga's ancient text? Doesn't have to be from the sutures that has been really powerful or really resonated for you that you can pinpoint and share? Two things that have stood out for me and really helped me with my own practice, and I think they, I would say that would come from, um, the Sutras, the steadiness and ease, the steers, looker, and asanam.
That has always been something that has been. Quite present in my teaching and quite present in my practice. That steadiness and ease as you practice and listening to your body that's. And also too allowing your practice to shift and change, not just over a long period of time, but from moment to moment as well too.
But coming back to that essence of steadiness and ease in your practice. Not pushing yourself to your maximum like it's a sport or something. Exactly. And also too, I would say tapas like discipline is having that internal discipline and inner drive to show up for your practice. And like I've made a decision a long time ago that if I was going to teach yoga, you had to be part of my daily life.
Walk your talk. Absolutely. Sorry. And that discipline for me to teach most authentically. And then sometimes our practice does waiver, but sometimes we're not as disciplined as what we would like. But I think that if you have that overall discipline and the commitment to yourself to honour your own practice, that would shine through in your teaching because the students know that you just don't, you're not doing this to earn an income or for your job.
You're doing this because you, it comes from your heart, you embody it. Can live it first and that comes out in your teaching for sure. Yeah. It's so much easier to teach anyway because the words just flow, like it just flows through you rather than having to, you're not teaching from your mental body, you're teaching from, from your inner light, I guess.
And you can understand how it feels. Although practices are going to land differently for people since we're so unique. But for me it's important to have a consistent practice that that is the key that you're right. It's the consistency. Because of brain neuroplasticity. But I just remember years ago when I started teaching yoga, I didn't have that.
And I think there are a lot of yoga teachers that don't have that. But it's good to, especially as senior teachers, we should know enough to have our own practice, I think. For sure. So, I guess you are like me, you've been practicing for a long time. Longer than I have actually. Has your personal practice changed?
It has definitely, uh, when I first came into the practice, maybe in my early twenties, it was more to balance out because I was doing a lot of physical work at the gym, like I was doing, um, you know, like pump classes and more physical work. I think that yoga was more of the, the quiet balance in and amongst everything else, and it was like that for a while.
And then I think, and after I had Olivia, after I had my daughter. Then my body was quite tired physically, and I gravitated more toward a yin type practice because I felt like my body needed to be on the ground a bit more and to go slow and to be still. And then I think I've come back around maybe like the last two years or so into more of a, more of a stronger physical practice like I've come back to, my energy levels have changed again.
I think the difference is that I practise or I teach what I feel is needed on the day. So, I see the benefits. What you're saying is your practice depends on how you're feeling on the day. Exactly, yeah. So it depends on the time of day and the season. And also too, um, my energy levels as well too. So, I don't tend to lock myself into one particular way of practicing.
That sounds like me meeting your mood and what your needs are that day. because every day is different. Right. So, you reside in Brisbane at the moment and most recently you survived Cyclone Alfred and you also survived some flooding a few years ago. Are you able to share how your yoga practice supported you and, and what you felt in your nervous system during Cyclone Alfred?
Yeah, so I think when there's times when you have things that are outside of your control, it's quite natural for your body to contract. So, I know in in my own body, physically I felt that my muscles were really tight. I felt quite rigid in my body and I think it's sort of in that protective kind of mode that bracing.
And one thing I have noticed in the last week or so is even though we've come through the other side, I. A lot of people, myself included, feel really tired. All of every single little reserve of energy that you have existing in your body, everything, I guess, that week while you're bracing and preparing, and it's all unknown.
Every little reserve of energy that you have, in a sense is used in a way just to get you through to the other side, and then when you finally get through to the other side. Yes, there is that way of release, but it doesn't mean that what you've been holding onto in, in that short space of time, it's like that, the residual effect.
It's just, it's not like an on and off switch or on and off button and takes time for all that to unravel. So, I've been finding a lot this week. It's slower practices, really connecting to your breath, meditating and not needing, not wanting to use as much physical exertion, less physical output. Myself and most people around me. I've noticed a craving. There's a lot of grief and exhaustion. Guess central nervous system's been on high alert. You've been hypervigilant and it makes sense if you're being exhausted. Yeah, and the anticipation, because it was building for quite some time. Oh, I don't know how that would feel like, but I imagine that that anticipation.
Would've made things hard because you are waiting and waiting for it to happen, and you didn't know exactly when it would. Did that make it harder for you? Yes, it did. Yeah. Yeah. In a sense. I think if it came through earlier in a way, we, we might've been more unprepared, but I think the buildup with the two, sort of two, two and a half days before anything really came through.
It's just that, that feeling of being in limbo, the unknown. So, in, in one sense, we might've been less prepared or had less time to, to prepare, but I think if it came through and moved through quicker, then the anticipation would've felt different. Yeah, that's what other people have said to me. Was it as bad as you thought it would be?
No, it, it wasn't. The floods were a lot worse. The floods were about, I know, five times worse. The flood, the floods were scarier. So, can you tell me a bit about the floods that you survived? Yeah, well, I think the flooding went on for several days and it was just, we got to the point where if it was another 24 hours of water, then we would've been in real trouble. You see the water starting to rise as well too. So, but luckily where we are situated. Our state, sort of right in, in the middle. So, for the water to reach us, it had to travel quite a long way. But we, we saw sort of, because we, there's a, a lake in the middle of our estate, I felt the lake was flooded and the bike path, the walking path was flooded.
It started to come up to the end of our street. So, it stopped at the end of our street. It was heading up higher. It stopped in time, but if it had been another 24 hours, I think it would've caused a lot more damage. So, it was scarier in that you could have caused more damage you thought, and you felt more frightened.
The biggest thing was the roads being closed, the access and as well too, um, the bridge being closed. So much debris on the bridge. It really causes a, a divide because at the time both of my kids were, their school was on the other side of the bridge. There's not really any other way. There's only two bridges to get from one side to the other and the other bridge is quite a distance away.
So, our bridge that's near our house, that was closed for a couple of days and that really limited a lot of what we were able to do in, in a sense of I didn't want to send my kids to school because if I couldn't get them back Yeah. It's not happening. Yeah. You felt trapped. Yes. Yeah. And that you couldn't get them and be with them.
Do you think other people who haven't been through it have understood what it's like, have been compassionate about it, have you felt supported? Yeah, I have actually. You don't always need for people to, to understand what it feels like to be in your shoes, but I think it's just that feeling of someone saying, are you okay?
And I care for you. That's enough. All that you want. Not just to say, oh, well it wasn't that bad. It wasn't a stage four cyclone. What's a big deal? You didn't have a right to be scared or something, or you have insurance. That's good. You had people reach out and I'm sorry you had to go through that, Lisa.
It's not a pleasant situation to go through. I know. I would've been scared. I don't know exactly what it's like, but. I feel for you, and I'm glad it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be, so that's great. Yeah, I think it's just that loss of control as well too. And knowing that you just have to stay at home.
Like in that sense it was just the things that were like the simple things became really important that week. Like just being with the kids was really important. That's, that was it. I just, being home with my family was, it was the simple things and. Yeah, just, and not venturing out of the house, like protecting your house and just, yeah.
Not in a physical sense so much, but more in a heartfelt sense that the simple things that often we take for granted. Yeah. And showing us what's really important, like our family. Yeah, absolutely. So, is there any tools you would like to share? Simple tools that you use, like maybe some simple breath work that you used during adversity.
I think re really regulating your breath. I think so. I've been conscious of, of really trying to find that evenness and steadiness through my breath, and grounding my breath as well too. That's what has been really important for my nervous system. Because I do still feel even a week or so afterwards that my nervous system still feels like it's buzzing a a little bit and my body is tired.
And just bringing your breath back into an even steady place makes a big difference. Huge difference. And can you just elaborate on exactly what you mean about grounding your breath for people who may not have the knowledge that we do? For me, grounding is that sense of safety, that sense of security. So, as I've been breathing, I just slow it down to a pace where I really feel my breath present in my body.
It doesn't feel like, it's not so much that your breath leaves your body, but if you're working, keeping your breath down low on your body, that's probably the best way to explain it. Like keeping your breath more like lower, like the lower half of your body physically and really imagine it anchoring down into your body.
That's helped a lot. Grounding down into the earth. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's a great way of explaining it. Also, have there been any particular specific practices that you've found particularly effective for your mental health other than what you've just said over the years? One thing that really tied everything in for me because I have trained and practised and I teach different styles of yoga.
So, I think the one thing that really united everything together for me. I really solidified everything was when I did the Aveda training and I learned more about your dosha and about changing your practice to fit within the seasons and your time of life, and that I think that's actually what tied everything together for me is working in that more holistic way, like your practice doesn't need to.
Need to be the same every single time. I don't feel fixed into one particular way to practice or teach myself because I understand that there is that flow. Like you practice different in the evening to what you do in the morning. You practice different. It's springtime to what you do in summer. You practice different, maybe even on different day of the week.
So many different things come into play. That's more that deep and that internal listing and giving yourself permission to ask yourself the question, what does my body need today? Rather than, what should I do? Yes. Rather than what I think my inner critics tells me it should be doing. But listen, exactly.
Honouring your body's needs. Ayurveda is just so interesting. But what's interesting is, from what I've learned is that it never used to be separated from yoga or yoga used to never be separated from Ayurveda. Yeah. And it's a shame. It has been separated for many reasons I think. It's all interwoven because yoga isn't just your 30 minutes or your 60 minutes on your mat.
It's your whole entire lifestyle. The food that you receive and the way that you take care of your body that supports your yoga practice. But yoga practice also is a therapy to support Ayurveda as well too. So, they It's a partnership. Exactly. Beautifully put. You've done a lot more study than me, but with my studies at the moment. I'm learning more about it and I'm just finding it fascinating.
So, what inspired you to become a yoga teacher? I think when I started doing my yoga teaching, like it's hard to exactly put my finger on it, but when I did the yoga teaching, I felt like this light was lit within me and I just knew that it was something I was meant to be sharing with others. And I can't even explain it, but I just felt like I had this call, like someone came to me and said to me, this is your path. Because it was a feeling, it wasn't a mental decision, it wasn't from my mental body, it was. Something inside of me that just knew that I was meant to be teaching. Like I just knew that this was my, not my gift to the world, but I just knew this. This was my offering to the world. I just knew that it was something I was meant to share with others.
Yeah, it sounds like how I felt about starting this podcast. It just seemed to come to me like I was meant to do it, like it was my dharma. And was this the case with deciding to become a yoga therapist as well? Doing a lot more study to become a yoga therapist. Yeah. Um, I think with a, a bit of experience, like under my belt as well too, like I, I'll never stop learning like I've got such a curiosity for, and a lot of the study I do really is for my own personal development as well too.
Yes, my students will benefit from what I learned too, but I feel like there's a different pathways to yoga. I very much move on the pathway of knowledge as well too. And it's endless. Like honestly, it's, and it's not to obtain another qualification, it's because I. I really, really do. I love what I do so much that it really lights me up when I'm deepening my experience and deepening my knowledge.
So it's not in a selfish way that I want to accrue more qualifications because I really have that yearning. Deepen. I'm the same way, passionate and fascinated, and forever will be a student. Yeah. When we stop opening our minds to growth and learning, we stop growing. Have you seen a lot of changes in the industry since you started working in the yoga industry?
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say. I think for a lot of us, COVID was probably a big game changer for many people. We weren't really as affected in Brisbane as what you probably were in Melbourne. I mean, the biggest shift, I guess is a lot of studios. I. Now I have an online presence as well too.
Yeah. One thing I, I guess I have noticed that was a big shift or big change, like in the 10 years since I did my teacher training. So many more teacher trainings are on offer and it's more readily accessible. Like when I did my training in Melbourne, there was three places to choose out of, and there were traditional yoga schools.
Oh, that's a good point. You're right. And there was no such thing as online yoga teacher training, and No way. Yeah. And really cheap quick trainings. A few trainings. There was three places that I looked at and they were all over the course of a year, and you had to be really committed to, like, once you signed up, you had to make that commitment.
It wasn't just a a do it, your own leisure, fit it in and around your lifestyle. It had to be committed to the study. So, it was a really, really big decision to do the study because it was a time in my life where I think Olivia was nine months old when I first considered doing the training. I didn't even know how I'd manage it to be honest, but I knew that it was going to be a commitment, like a lifestyle commitment.
The training was going be a big part of your life. Yeah. I think it's good how that used to happen. And I know when I did my training, they wanted evidence that you'd been practicing for two years, you know? Yes. Same. Someone who just randomly said, oh, I want to become a yoga teacher, because it's not something you can just pick up.
It's an embodied lived experience, and yes, that's changed a lot nowadays, hasn't it? Yeah, and there's a lot more immersions where you learn a lot in a short amount of time. And also, condensed trainings as well too. Like I, I think my training first year was 500 hours. I didn't even, to be honest, I didn't even know that there was a minimum requirement of 200 hours.
I just signed up for this training and it was 500 hours. Then the second year was another 500 hours, so I ended up with a [00:21:00] thousand hours over the course of just under two years, and I still felt that I didn't have enough knowledge to even teach, like I still felt that was, there was so much more to learn, even though it was very thorough.
It does make me think too, for 200 hours, how much of the basics, like you can't fit London into 200 hours. I honestly don't think, uh, 200 hours is enough. That could change. And if it's advertised as as a starter, that's fine, but I don't feel like it's enough to teach. Yeah, I agree with you.
That's why I went on to do the 500 hours, but a lot of yoga teachers do the 200 hours and that's it. I think if you had a long-term committed practice and you embodied a lot of what you were, were learning yourself. I think if you, if you had your own journey with yoga before you came to the training, it would be easier.
But I don't believe that you can do the training having practiced four or five times. Yeah. So, is that something you'd like to see change the minimum hours and people going back to the days where you had to be more committed? Yeah, I think, I feel like 200 hours would give you more depth as yoga practitioner, but I don't know if two hours is, and I think that there is value, if you're wanting to deepen your own practice and you have questions, and I think 200 hours would be a great baseline as a practitioner, but I don't know if it's enough to teach others.
Especially if that teacher has said, no, I don't need to do any more training. I'm done. I've done my 200 hours, if it's adding on to something else, like I know in some situations some people will just add in yoga, like fitness instructor type. Oh yeah. So, they'll do the 200 hours of yoga, but not actually living the yoga life.
Like it's just an extra class they can pick up on the timetable. When you lose the essence of it. That makes sense. I have heard of that. And they treat it like it's an exercise class, which it's not. Yeah. Different than teaching Pilates or bar or whatever, which I also teach. It's the yoga shapes. It's not the yogic way.
Yeah, exactly. The languaging is different and you can feel the difference. That's okay if that's what you're seeking. But I [00:23:00] don't think I'd be able to teach like that. A lot of us couldn't who've done more training. I know you're all familiar with human variation and know that we're all different and unique.
Is that something else you'd like to see change with more teacher trainings emphasizing human variation and that one pose might come easily to you or maybe medicine to you, but it could be poisoned for your neighbour. Definitely. So I think when the asana side of a yoga practice, is taught to students.
I think that it's important at some stage to create that understanding around that what it looks like from the outside isn't necessarily what it feels like on the inside. So, and I think it needs to be also part of how a yoga pose is taught to a bigger class as well, too. Giving that permission, I think maybe in a more traditional.
Sense of yoga students were pushed a lot more. I think yoga is taught differently in the east of what it's taught in the West in some ways that, that they were not stricter, but maybe more disciplined in the way that they taught. [00:24:00] And I think we have different bodies in the west as well too. I think that we're more sedentary as well too.
And I don't think we're physically quite possibly as physically able to do some of the traditional yoga pros just because we sit down too much and we don't move around too much and we're not walking around our neighbourhood driving and. So, in that sense. Yes I do. Yeah. And focus less on the aesthetics and more about the function of the pose, since it's not gymnastics and things like that.
Yeah, and I think too, it's not competitive. Exactly. Yeah. It's not a competition. Great. The students' mental health, when they know that and they know that it shouldn't have to look like the person next to them, and there's not something wrong with them if they struggle with a certain pose or find a pose, impossible.
It doesn't matter. Exactly. So, if someone wanted to become a yoga teacher, is there any particular advice you'd give them? I think spend time on your own personal practice first. You are always going to have your own personal practise  alongside your teaching journey, but I think to be committed enough to have a steady ongoing practice, definitely I feel like is essential.
And like what you said, minimum two years, I think is a great baseline to then venture into teaching. Yeah, it's great advice. Yeah, but you've got to feel the practice and you've, you need to understand, of course, you're going to formalize things when you do a training, but I think you need to practice with other teachers as well too, and have your own home practice and do your own reading, and do a little bit of your own groundwork first.
Rather than expecting it all to be delivered from one person or one school. I think you need to have some personal experience. Yeah, that's true. Do your own research and you can learn a fair bit about that. In addition, with doing extra studies like that, I think just keep going. Practice in your community.
Just find, yeah, go and do your own practice. Yeah. It's good to practice at a studio before you teach there, to make sure it's the sort of studio you want to teach at, that it fits with ethics, et cetera, and your teaching style. Have you done any recent trainings or workshops recently that have been eye-opening and taught you something really important?
They all do. They all do. I'm glad that I did the Y training quite early into my teaching journey because that really did highlight for me the skeletal variations. So that was great. That came in quite early into my teacher training. Every training has taught me something different. Like I really love the AVE training.
Like that taught me a lot about, about everything really. Yeah. Personalizing it. And so, your teaching would've changed because of all the experience and all the trainings like with Yeah. It's become a bit like a melting pot now, no one class is the same as the next, and I don't teach a particular style.
If I'm teaching at a gym, then normally at a gym, they either just have normal yoga or yin. That's all that they tend to specify. Hmm. But even if I was teaching a yoga class, I will still teach what I feel is needed for the students on the day. I tune in with the students that arrive at [00:27:00] class.
And some days we might have more of a physicality to our practice, and other times we don't move much at all. It's slower and it's still, and yeah, I don't pigeonhole myself anymore. It's amazing how much we can change over the years with our teaching from learning from our students and learning from trainings and our own experience.
The other thing that's changed since we both did our teaching, there's a much more emphasis on. Catering for student’s mental health. I know when on my initial training, I was encouraged, no, you need to correct this student. You know, need to go and physically adjust them and blah, blah, blah. And now we're being told don't do adjustments or use consent tokens.
I think consent tokens are a great idea. I know that either not giving physical adjustments, all using consent tokens in itself is not enough to cater for students' mental health. I also know that even if you do your best, you may still trigger a student. , I've had yoga teachers say to me, well, I can only do so much and if this doesn't work for them, we'll go to someone else's class.
When I've said, be careful with using candles. Would there be any other advice, that comes to mind about how else you'd cater for students' mental health in class? Yeah, I think the biggest thing for my own conscious teaching is that a lot, of my classes, not all, but a lot of my classes are built around community.
And I also do really emphasize every single class to give students permission to practice the way that they feel honours their own body. And it's not just physically through their body, but also too, I think there's no sort of hierarchy in class either. Like if students want to come and chat to me after class or they're not sure on something.
I always like to make sure that I'm quite approachable for them to, sometimes they don't want to and sometimes they do, but I always keep that door open for discussion, like it's not me telling you what to do. It's a collaborative approach. And also, the giving of permission as well too. And I think the letting go of expectation and knowing that our practice also is holistic as well too.
Like it won't just touch our physical body, it will touch other aspects of our body. And when we do release things, it's normal as well too. And there that there is support around that. Yeah. And things are going to land differently for students. Sometimes we might release something and end up having some tears come out.
And that's quite normal from my experience anyway, from teaching classes and personal experience. As I was saying before, they practice for mental health, although start practicing. Have you seen some profound changes in any particular, unnamed, undisclosed student or a bunch of students because of yoga?
Yeah. I think the one thing I would really say is that when students start coming regularly, they notice a difference when they don't practice regularly. Yeah, true. So, they always say that they feel better when they're in a regular practice and that they feel the difference. Like they can feel the difference in their day to day life as well too.
When they're coming to that consistent practice, they feel a shift inside themselves when, when they're coming to class. It's good. They're noticing the difference. My husband who was before we were married, in the early days, he’d see me get anxious and say, ‘oh, you need to go to a yoga class!’ And I'm sure he wasn't the only one who'd say that to their partner or whatever.
So what services are you currently providing these days? So, I teach quite a few classes out in my local community. I guess that that's the majority of what I do with my time, but I'm also in the process of putting together online course content, which I'm about halfway through and I offer day retreats.
So, I do three day retreats a year, and I am, this weekend I'm hosting a Restore and Unwind immersion, so I normally do maybe three to four of those a year as well too. Workshops. , I have my first, first a beta workshop coming up in the middle of the year. So, it's a combination of weekly classes with the community, moving more into online course content, um, which takes a little while to together and to get all that together, and yeah, and then also to the immersions of the day retreats as well.
With the online course content, it's incredible how much work it is, especially as technical glitches or something I didn't realise before I started offering online content how much work it was and what a learning curve it is to, with all these new skills you've got to learn. Yeah. I am taking it slowly though, because I do want to do it well.
Uh, and I had some great momentum at the start of the year, and now that we are moving house, I've not had the energy so, I've put that on a hold for a few weeks, but I'll be back into it. It's a lot to learn and I was quite overwhelmed with it and shocked at how much work it was. And takes a lot longer than we think it will often.
I think that was the expectation. I thought that I'd be finished by the end of last year. And I think that they'll be finished by the, maybe the middle of this year. So, I think it's knowing that you're going to have times or weeks where you, you can put more energy into it and knowing that you'd have times or weeks where you need to maybe step back from it a little bit.
But it does take a lot of your own personal energy as well too, if you want to really personalise that. Definitely true. It's been quite challenging I've found. But very fulfilling though. Yeah, I agree. Very rewarding. I'd just like to finish up, Lisa, in you about India as I record this. You are off to India soon.
Yeah, so I'll be attending a week long yoga retreat in India. So, I think there's a group of maybe 15 to 20 of us. We are off to goer with a teacher that I've been mentoring with since I moved to Brisbane, so I know her quite well. She's been to India several times and her mother is also Indian as well too, so she has very strong ties to India and yeah, I'm really excited!
Oh, I would be too! It's on my bucket list to do a retreat or a training there or just go there. I'll hope to one day. I hope you have a great time in India. Lisa, it's been lovely having you on my podcast today. Thank you so much. 

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