One of my goals with the blog this year, is to tell the rich story of our lives in New Plymouth via the places and people we’ve come to know and love.
One of those places and people is my local Yoga studio and my teacher, Tria. I go to the Yoga Studio of New Plymouth and am learning to practice in the Iyengar style. It’s a new type of yoga for me, as I practiced Hatha in San Francisco and mainly Bikram in London.
Yoga has helped me find my breathe in life. It balances my running, stretches my body and calms my mind. I have been on a few yoga retreats and love dabbling in time spent in practice and healthy eating, with people who live a Yoga life style. One of my childhood and dearest friends has created a yoga studio in New York, and I feel cool just knowing her. (Check it out – MindBodySoul Yoga.)
I’ve learned a few coping and adjustment skills that I put in place when moving to a new city. The main one is to find activities that I like and join as many as possible. Yoga classes, and running and wine clubs were top on my list in New Plymouth.
We moved from London in the cold winter, straight into another here in New Zealand. I knew Rod, and his family and no one else. I had no job, a funny accent and was still clinging to the belief that I could always go ‘home’ if I didn’t like it. I didn’t have my feet under me, and I was putting on a brave face and trying not to be lonely my first year. (I used to only let myself cry on Wednesday nights…some how the midweek pressure always got to me.)
I remember one of my first classes with Tria. It was a cold, rainy day here, typical of a Taranaki winter. Class was almost at the end with the final pose of Savasana or the corpse pose. I was laying down and Tria came and put a thick, comfy blanket over me, pulling it up over my shoulders. She didn’t say anything, but that act of kindness, that act of care, made me well up in emotion. Tears overflowed and ran down my face.
A little act of kindness from a relative stranger. Her classes are rich, she is kind – and I now have a place to practice, to stretch, to find my breathe. New Plymouth is a kinder place for me because of it.