Other Therapies
Yoga Classes by Leanne Toy
Leanne Toy is our Yoga Teacher in the Bundaberg and Bargara area. She offers yoga classes for adults and children.
We are happy to recommend her Yoga classes.
About Leanne Toy
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“I used to think that living “in my head” was all there was. I am my thoughts, I thought. A Virgo and a journalist, being analytical was part of my identity.
It wasn’t until I was introduced to yoga 15 years ago that I began to view my mind in a different light. Today, my mind is less of a controlling monster, towering above me (sometimes with gnashing teeth) and more of a cute little puppy playing in the corner, called upon when I need it. |
The danger of living “in our heads” is that the mind can tend to be critical and judgmental, of ourselves and others. Beliefs, opinions, voices and conditioning from early childhood all dwell here. So much of these thoughts are repetitive, negative and damaging to how we feel about ourselves. When we identify with our mind, that is, when we think that our thoughts define who we are, we are totally controlled by our ego. (I highly recommend Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth for his clear and congruent teachings about ego and the mind).
All those years ago, I left that first yoga class feeling a mixture of elation and shock. I didn’t know why, but I was feeling fantastic for the first time in a long time. And I was shocked to realise that I hadn’t been breathing fully for a very long time, possibly my entire adult life. I was hooked. My husband called it my “drug”. I was working in a very stressful job at the time and he would look into my eyes when I came home from a yoga class and say “you’re back”.
Yoga is a system of personal development that began many thousands of years ago in India. It is nothing to do with religion and everything to do with inquiry. I love the acronym Your Own Growing Awareness.
Yoga helps us to live in a new way. It guides us to understand ourselves better and helps us to awaken to the inner love and peace and joy that is our true nature. We are all “perfect beings” at our core. Yoga helps us to remember that. It helps us to shine a light on all the layers we have built around that core. These layers are strategies we have employed from soon after birth to protect the vulnerable inner child from pain and harm.
Once we notice them, we have a chance to assess them honestly, to deal with them, to grow and change and to be freed up to live our lives fully. A favourite symbol of yoga is the lotus flower. The lotus grows out of mud, countless petals unfurling one by one as it opens its full bloom to the light.
Yoga encourages the uncovering of our hidden potential. This is enlightenment. Shining light on any dark areas in our lives and opening up to a new way of being. Letting go of the old and allowing the new. Noticing where we are stuck. Feeling what we are feeling instead of suppressing. Expressing our truth. Seeing clearly what limits our experience of this precious lifetime.
Yoga practise, on a mat, in a class, following a DVD in the lounge room, has been greatly misunderstood in the West. People think that yoga is about having an impossibly fit and flexible body. Or that it is something mind-bogglingly esoteric. Trawling the ocean of different yoga styles and patented schools with nifty names that have popped up in the past 30 years in the West, it’s no wonder.
An Indian Swami, a yoga Master, visiting Queensland two years ago, was gobsmacked by this state of affairs. ”In India, yoga is yoga,” he said. ”Nobody asks you what style of yoga you do. Yoga is yoga.”
But we Westerners feel more comfortable when we can dissect and label (and market) something, when we know where it “fits in” to our world.
When asked about my style of yoga, I remember the Swami’s perplexed voice with a smile. How to describe something that is as simple and as sacred, as natural and as essential to life as breathing? We don’t need a mat to practise it. Yoga is a way of being.
In yoga, we meet ourselves just as we are, right now. We let go of everything except what is being experienced and discovered right now.
The physical practice of postures (asana), breath awareness (pranayama) and meditation (dhyana) helps us to feel more alive and more connected to our bodies. In yoga practice, as in life, there is a balance between action and stillness, between effort and surrender. We learn to trust in the flow of life, to welcome everything that comes our way as potential for more petals to open.
The mind’s exhausting Moulin Rouge can can routine falls away and we connect through our body to a deeper intelligence.
And in allowing ourselves to be fully present, something magical happens. Our hearts expand and our capacity for love increases. I have heard meditation described as a love affair with the solar system. Yoga could be described as a love affair with our own body and through it, with our own natural state. This connection brings us into harmony with all living things and with the rhythm of nature. Out of this place comes inspiration, creativity, love, happiness and peace of mind.
We could all do with a bit more of that. And it can be as simple as one conscious breath.”
Bookings and Enquiries
Please contact Leanne to book your Yoga Class or for more information. You can contact leanne on:
(07) 4159 1215 or 0434 619 872
Between 8am - 5pm (Monday - Saturday)
- ALOHA - to love is to share the happiness of life here and now -