this yoga: teachers
charlene mcauley, MA
"I use the word Yoga to mean all those physical and verbal and emotional and meditative things I do in loving response to the needs of my body and spirit." - Todd Walton, Open Body: Creating your own personal Yoga
Yoga today is so wide in its approach, with something for everyone. Yoga for me is a connection to my two homes: body and Earth and how much presence I can bring to my inner and outer world for better relationships to myself, loved ones and environment.
Since I began practising yoga 15 years ago, it has been the golden thread that has ran through many changes in my life. Both my practice and teaching has changed as my life has changed, yet the desire to remain rooted, express my uniqueness and encourage this in others remains. "How am I today?" marks the beginning of a practice, and amongst the structure of movements I keep sensing into what I need, and ask students to remain curious about what they need. "How would it feel to do it like this or like that?" With so many expectations and demands in life, it is a momentous and a revolutionary action to ask "What do I need right now?"
My teaching journey thus far has granted me the opportunity to teach yoga in Manchester, Berlin, Iceland, Austria, conferences, as well as being in-house teacher to Everton FC’s First Team for over a six year period. Much of my private work has a focus on rehabilitation with experience in teaching those with a whole range of musculoskeletal injuries. And this work often leads to a shift in perception of the mind body relationship, as awareness grows. I am also a mentor to Yoga teachers who are looking to move towards an embodied way of practising and teaching.
I’m always a yoga student first and foremost. In a class setting I’m showing students what I have learnt through my own practice and wonderful teachers from yoga and other areas of movement and life, including Donna Farhi, Julie Martin and Shai Faran, as well as Gestalt Therapy having a huge influence on how I teach.
My teaching experience includes yoga and meditation classes for beginners, professional athletes, one-to-ones, school children, and of course, my mum! Anyone can practise yoga, all we need to do is breathe and be curious.
For Charlene’s online classes click here
dr.med. christoph seiland
I was 17 when I saw my all time favourite musician, John Frusciante, doing splits and some other crazy movements as a warm up for a show. Although I had no name for it, something about what he was doing touched me deeply.
Up to this point, in terms of free time activities, I was very much a runner, exploring the mountains around my hometown in Austria alone or with my dog, as well as having periods where I enjoyed climbing and mountain biking as well. In addition to this, I was and still am very much into music and learned some instruments over the course of the years of which the guitar still is my favourite. I did some research and found out that what my idol was doing is called Ashtanga Yoga, which prompted me to buy some books about this topic and imitate what I saw on the pictures. It was fun and felt great! For many years this was my style of yoga and I travelled to the originating place of this method, Mysore in India, as well as to other teachers around the world to learn as much about it as possible.
As the human body always was a subject of interest, awe and inspiration for me, I studied medicine to delve deeper into the mechanics and functions of it. I deeply value what I am learning as a doctor, however, I now also wish to share what I know through the practice of Yoga.
Inspired by the Ido Portal method, I am currently exploring different areas of movement, such as the rings, gymnastics and dancing to distill from it what can be of use in the context of Yoga. All that exists is continually changing and expanding, which includes my knowledge, awareness, practice and teaching. I will always continue to explore where there may be more fun, effective and beneficial movements of the body to express that state of Yoga.
An Anatomy and Biomechanics teacher on various teacher trainings. I also hold ad hoc yoga workshops in Manchester. Keep an eye on the Workshops page for details.
Click on the link to read Christoph’s research into The value of stretching for injury-prevention in athletics and for the maintenance of the health of the movement apparatus (only available in German at present!).
videos
A snapshot of Charlene’s unique Embodied Expression workshop