The nights are long and the days cold but the afternoon sun casts a luxurious blanket of golden beams across the floor of the old Oddfellow’s Hall on Steel St.
Steve and I left our lives in Melbourne to explore the remote and wild edges of Australia for a couple of years and seek out our future home. We held Newcastle as a likely destination in mind, without really knowing what this city or its inhabitants would be like. I still wonder at the luck of it, to find myself in this place, amongst these people… you people! I somehow stumbled upon Iyengar Yoga as I somehow bumbled into Newie and a partnership with David, and I am so often struck by the thought that this a wonderful place to be.

This life in Iyengar Yoga is entwined with the lives of others it brings us in contact with. There’s a longevity to it that allows for real relationships to develop. Senior teachers with over forty years teaching experience, with yearly visits to the same teachers, in the same place in India. And their students, such as I, who continue to learn and be inspired by the dedication they demonstrate and the knowledge they share. We can look back at decades-old photos and laugh at how young we all were back then (mullets and perms). We are part of a network that spans the country and beyond that, the globe. We meet up at RIMYI in Pune, India, at workshops and national conventions and in committees, in classes and teacher training and professional development. On my travels I could drop in for a cuppa and a practice at an Iyengar School with a friend, or a friend of a friend in almost every city. It always felt like home. This method has attracted the grounded, kind and dedicated practitioners who teach, study, learn and practice at Hamilton Yoga. For this I am grateful.

We take our subject seriously because we have experienced in our own lives the profound effects it can have. Beyond the appearance of stretching or posing is a method formed out of text that is thousands of years old, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. The transmission of meaning has survived being handed down through many generations and across diverse geographical and cultural landscapes. Patanjali offers nothing less than a practical way to freedom from suffering, a way for us to know and be at peace within ourselves and this existence we find ourselves in. 

“Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you have to choose to embark on the inward journey to discover it.”  *BKS Iyengar
Our aim at Hamilton Yoga is to provide the sanctuary, the tools and the support for each individual to set out on this journey and to foster a caring community that nurtures one another along the long and winding path.