Maree OConnor

I Started practicing yoga in 1988, integral yoga with a friend who had spent a lot of time in India, especially with the Satyananda yogis.
I went to classes here and there but was more focused n my own daily practice.
Friends asked me if I would teach them - thus the beginning of my teaching career. I loved teaching. To share that amazing feeling I experienced from practice. That is when I decided to Study with IYTA as I realised people could not practice the yoga postures as easy as me! I needed help. I wanted help. 1998 I received my Diploma in teaching.

During that period I experimented with a form of Ashtanga yoga. I loved the challenge as I was a strong woman. My teaching became a fusion of everything I had learned and my own experimentation. I did not feel I wanted the restriction of a pure traditional form. Just the bits I liked. And now in contemporary times you see that reflected in the many forms of yoga available.

My teaching was blossoming and I became well known in our little town. There was only another fellow IYTA teacher and myself.

In 2002 I moved to town to expand my teaching - building a studio under my home. Very close to town. Perfect. It was also the time I began to experience lower back pain which was only temporarily relieved from my practice. A masseuse expressed that instead of my fusion type practice, I should try a more disciplined or pure form, like Ashtanga or Iyengar. Well I had done Ashtanga and I no longer had the energy for that. Iyengar?
First class with Sue Scott at Noosa Yoga Centre and I was hooked. Had I never felt so centred, grounded. I taught class that night and it influenced me immediately. My students commented - in a positive way.
Thus the journey to become an Iyengar yoga teacher. A pure traditional form with a living guru and family and institute to study in India.
I remained disciplined and began the process of undoing all my habitual practice to a practice given to me to study, practice,consolidate,learn and did I find the method conflicted with what i had learned in the past. Different but with reason,with practice and experience the changes first hand. An amazing man , and though he has now passed the practice remains disciplined, pure but forever evolving within the tradition. Amazing is all I can say.

So yes I have studied with both national and international teachers. I studied with Guruji for 3 days in China. I am approaching my second visit to Pune,India the home of Iyengar yoga. Alignment, sequencing,techniques and use of props is what makes Iyengar unique. It makes it so exciting as a teacher to be able to teach people of all abilities. It has assisted my recovery thru illness and injuries. Nothing else could have done that for me, on my journey anyway.

In 2014 I opened a yoga studio in town called Maleny Yoga Vrksha - Tree of Yoga. An nice central space open to teachers of different styles of yoga to teach. A nice central space for the public, to easily access yoga classes. The studio is fully equipped so just bring yourself. Teachers, classes gave come and gone, but we also have our core group which brings stability to the studio. At the moment we have Iyengar, Vinyasa, Radiant Light Flow, Yantra yoga and Satyananda.