Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree

27/11/2025

Last bit of our African holiday- the wild animals! These beautiful, sentient beings are beyond all adjectives, they resonate with an energy of pure presence. Walking with the elephants. OMgosh I will never get used to how it feels to walk alongside these incredible mammals. Did you know that elephants are the best mothers, and form the most loyal and connected social groups? They celebrate the birth of their young. They mourn and re-visit the burial grounds of their dead. And they are poached as are all the other animals featured here, by disgusting non- human nations for various body parts for "medicines", usually of a sexual prowess nature. And they are bred for private game trophy hunters. May those who kill for fun return as the lowest form of energetic being - a rat perhaps or a cockroach in the cycle of sa ta na ma.

These 3 elephants here are rescues, in fact most of the animals on this farm have been rescued from abuse, poaching and illegal trafficking. Mum elephant is called Three, and is pictured here with her biological daughter and adopted daughter. Three remembered Derek, he fed her as a little boy. She sniffed him all over with her trunk to reconnect. So beautiful. The two male lions Dandelion and Boris, a white lion. Beautiful female lions, amazing predators. The most lethal of the predators here are the Cape Leopards. Roxy, the lone hyena, another rescue story. About 15 years old, the ranger said she was the most intelligent and grumpy of all the animals on the farm. Cheetahs, they could barely raise their heads to glance at us gawking humans. Giraffes waiting for treats. Zebra, Wildebeest and the dearest Warthogs. And the birds! Weaver birds, my favourite bird from childhood. Their nests are magical creations and the males spend so much time decorating them and lining them with soft mimosa leaves to attract the females. The lone Hammerhead bird, waiting for fish. Vultures, we used to soar with them on our hangliders and paragliders . Finches of all colours. See you on the mats students - love and namaste Margot!

24/11/2025

Back in business! I hope many of you can join me back on the mats today Tuesday 25/11/25 9.30am Zamia Theatre, MT Tamborine. All classes normal from now on. We are enjoying classes all the way up to Saturday 20/12/25 and the studio will reopen Monday 12/1/26.
So happy to be back!
Love and namaste Margot

20/11/2025

Our leg to Cape Town. And I cant wait to do a full yoga class with you all! My morning yoga routine is not the same. Cape Town is lovely, crowded with tourists, hawkers and everyone else. We lasted a few days and had to move to more remote digs. Definitely not city fans. And the wind blew about 30 to 40knots everyday except the one we went up the mountain, us and the rest of CT. A 2.5hour queue, even though we got there as it opened and the whole business soured by privledged locals bribing the queue ushers and jumping the queue much to the outrage of a very vocal Netherlander in front of us. When corruption occurs from the top, the cartels in this current government do exactly what they want and everyone else feels they can do the same. Structures dont work when no one honours them. But the West Coast was our fave. Lonely, desolate, so beautiful and windy! The kitesurfing and foiling on Langebaan was world class. We were exhausted. Beach bomas, impromtu restaurants on the beach and beautiful white cottages of Cape Dutch origin. Kirstenbosch gardens breathtakingly beautiful and home to rare and endangered native species. Many are harvested illegally for the medicinal trade or wiped out through land development. These tireless amazing botanists are doing their best to preserve this amazing flora. Rich and fascinating stuff.

14/11/2025

Sagubona to all my beautiful students from sunny South Africa! I cant wait to reconnect with you guys on the mats on Tuesday 25/11. Have had a wonderful time so far reconnecting with loved ones. So important in our world of scattered, nomadic families. And not all care and no fun! Weve squeezed in some fabulous stuff as well. Shark diving off Gansbaai eastern cape. No great whites unfortunately but lots of hungry bronze whalers slamming themselves against your cage hoping for some yummy chum. This is actually a conservation effort and these remarkable people are raising awareness of how imortant sharks are in our ecosystem. Zip lining over the sea from the lighthouse to the beach mossel bay. And swimming in the pristine waters of storms river. That metal appendage was actually a ladder and years ago derek had a photo of 17yo me climbing out. Time flies when you have fun! Of course this beautiful place has its share of divine birds. The eagles! My fave bird. Travelling through the wheatbelt many telephone poles have nests for the black and the brown snake eagle. Hardedas waking us up in natal. Louries hiding in the forests of knysna. Shongolos, my fave centipede and this dear little tortoise was cruising through the garden. Theres always a downside to paradise though. The water here is undrinkable, even boiled. Full of ecoli. Many of the natal beaches are unswimnable, sewerage. And the postal system and railway systems have collapsed . Teething problems. The people here are as always, warm and gorgeous. Love and namaste Margot

13/11/2025

Resonating together. Resonance amplifies energy and creates powerful connections. When systems vibrate in sync, they produce constructive interference, where the energies align to create something greater than the sum of their parts. On our Yoga Retreat coming up soon, 20 – 22/3/26 (https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats) in this magical place called Springbrook, we are going to be using these principles of resonance to project our life course into higher realms of joy, health and abundance.

Resonance occurs when something from within us echoes with the external world. Resonance is a felt experience, an experience of connection. We can resonate with music, words, art and people. Resonance means that we feel a palpable energy surrounding these things its a powerful back-and-forth exchange of energy, like an electrical charge that springs up between us and the resonant source.

What are examples of resonance in the universe and how can I see these play out in my life? Emotional connection: Feeling an "electric" connection with someone, where your emotional and energetic frequencies align to make interactions feel effortless. Shared experiences: The amplification of energy in a group, like on yoga retreat, where the energy of the group enhances the individual experience. Meditation and Sound healing: both practices are used to consciously align one's internal "vibrations" with a desired state, promoting balance and well-being.

For centuries, we’ve been trapped in a mindset of scarcity and isolation. We see energy as something finite to hoard, rather than something relational to amplify. We treat relationships as transactions instead of connections. We build systems that prioritize efficiency over harmony and wonder why they fail. Resonance teaches us a different lesson: Energy is everywhere. Systems thrive through connection. Harmony isn’t weakness, it’s power. By ignoring resonance, we’ve literally been working against the universe’s natural design. So, when we fully engage with life and we learn to resonate on every level of life, we can begin to understand how everything is interconnected.

So how are we going to use the principles of Resonance to make our retreat a transformational experience on every level? Start with your body: Use the yoga to slow down, be present and pay attention to how your body feels. Move to your mind: Silence - at what point does your mental chatter slow and what is that hum behind your thoughts? Energy: Watch your breath. What are you holding down with your breath? What would happen if you let it out and breathed through those feelings and memories?

We’ll tune into the resonance of this land, Springbrook. Home of the Antarctic Beech, 2500 years old, these trees are relics of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent. How much wisdom can such a place hold? We’ll tune into the flow of the Universe: the phase of the moon, the movement of the sun and the movement of the stars. And finally, we’ll get a glimpse of the Divine – learning to trust in a greater presence supporting us and accepting that we are co-creators of our own life journeys.

Resonance isn’t a new idea, it’s the foundation of the universe. What’s new is our ability to apply it intentionally. The systems we build, the choices we make, and the connections we foster can create a life where energy flows freely, amplifying abundance for ourselves and those around us. Amazing stuff! Hope you can join us – love and namaste Margot

06/11/2025

Our Silent Retreat coming in March 20/3 – 22/3/26 (https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats) is all about our frequencies and how we vibrate in the world. So what causes us to vibrate and why would someone vibrate at a different frequency to someone else? It all comes down to your life force. How much life force do you hold, and how does that life force flow through your body? A baby holds more life force than an adult and fresh organic food holds more life force than frozen, canned or processed food. Our retreat centre in Springbrook holds more life force than a housing suburb. But can we increase our prana and what blocks our prana and is prana just energy? We will be exploring all of this on Retreat.

Prana is the universal life force that permeates everything in existence. When you no longer hold prana, you are dead. Prana regulates our physical body’s key systems. It ensures our heart beats, our food digests properly, and our body detoxifies. Spiritually, prana is a bridge to deeper realms. It supports our meditation practices, deepens our spiritual connections, and fosters a sense of oneness with the universe.

Prana is different to energy. Energy is likened to how activated you feel. I can feel energised by a yoga practice, by a hard ride on my mountain bike or by a fresh, green smoothie. But prana is different. It’s not just energy. It’s that metaphysical connection to something bigger than life, something beyond the physical existence. A person of high pranic energy would vibrate in different realms to others.

A lifestyle of denatured foods, stimulants that flog your adrenal glands or numb your mind, lack of movement, addictions, stress, an unhappy home life or career, grief, EMF, toxins in the food and water supply, toxins in the air, pharmaceuticals – these all stress our bodies, stress our organs, leave a huge toxic footprint on all your layers (physical, pranic, mental, emotional and spiritual) and lower your life force. Add to that injury, scarring from surgeries, immobility, prolonged illness and the fascia and connective tissue of the body adheres and clumps and the meridians and nadis struggle to allow the pranic life force to flow.

How depressing. None of us have escaped these impacts on our pranic flow, so what to do? Yoga was designed to push and pull the inner winds of the body and move this pranic energy. The yoga styles we will be practicing on Retreat include Tibetan Light Yoga and Yoga of the Vayus (the Inner Winds). Both consciously manipulate the flow of prana in the body. The main pranic pathways are the sun channel (Pingala, Ha), the moon channel (Ida, Tha) and the central channel (Sushumna).

Ida is cooling and calming energy and is deeply connected to our mental and emotional well-being, bringing mental clarity and calmness. Pingala is the sun’s warming energy, and it influences our productivity, physical strength, and motivation to achieve our goals. Sushumna is the central channel running along our spinal column. It is the pathway through which our spiritual energy ascends, potentially leading to enlightenment when activated. A clear central channel is key.

The very purpose of Yoga is to redirect the energies from ‘ha’ and ‘tha’ to the central channel, so as to attain samadhi, the deepest state of meditation. The prana energies that flow through this nadi include wisdom, joy, pure thoughts, and a connection to the Divine. So come and join us to open up those meridian pathways and raise your frequency! Love and namaste Margot

30/10/2025

So much amazing yoga in yoga class this week. And how we love this rain! So grateful for this life giving moisture and the cool change. Yesterdays 38 degrees with 40 knot Westerleys was something out of a horror movie. But back to yoga! So working on the nadis of the body, shifting stuck energy using Nadi Shodhana. A classic ta***ic breath to open up the channels of the body, bring us back into balance and help us let go of the excesses of modern life. Our YIN class last week was filled with vibration and resonance, taking our cellular bodies to new levels of healing. My Zygocactus. Its a brief, stunning display of blooms that was a welcome relief from the dry. And all the jacarandas are out in bloom. Did you know that the in city of Pretoria in South Africa, where many of the streets are lined with Jacarandas, the month of November cloaks the city in a purple haze from these exquisite trees. Such is our beautiful Mother Earth!

29/10/2025

The Studio is closed from Sat 1/11/25 to Mon 24/11/25 for family duties.
Apologies for the inconvenience!
Back on the mats Tues 25/11/25 9.30am Zamia Theatre, MT Tamborine and then its full steam ahead all the way up to Christmas!
Our last class will be Sat 20/12/25.
Keep checking your emails and the FB and Insta pages for lots of exciting articles and pics.
Love and namaste Margot

28/10/2025

My first Silent Yoga retreat was 2 years ago. It was such a success that I decided to alternate a talking and a silent yoga retreat each year. There was some resistance. Noooo! We'll be bored, be sad, go crazy, two whole days with my own thoughts! I wrote a couple of emails talking about the value of silence and how important silence is for self-growth. I mentioned the reality TV stars who fell apart once the TV show was over (hop onto my website www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au under BLOG to view these old articles). The most astounding thing was that these young people had LOVED the relentless scrutiny of their lives by the public and when that dried up, they slumped into depression or su***de. We also met Jo Blow who would rather give himself electric shocks just to bide the time than to sit happily for a period alone, with his own thoughts.

Did you know we are all encouraged to be permanently distracted, multi-tasking and shallow. We spend so little time on any one subject that we never form a real opinion, we just mouth someone else's. Not many people read books anymore. How exhausting - it’s so much easier to scroll through Instagram and take in bite size bits of information while we watch pretty images. This has been a carefully guided demise of the human mind by those in charge for the last 50 years. The moguls who own all the media and information channels would love us all to be mindless, distracted, drowning our sorrows in addictive substances and habits. We are so much easier to manipulate, sell something to, or influence. How on earth do you make good decisions when your mind is fluttering from place to place and everyone else is doing the same?

And of course, there was fear that we might be overwhelmed by our own sad thoughts, and the weekend retreat would disintegrate into a morbid rumination of all the horrid things that have happened to us. Well, the good news is – not a chance. Why? Well, you’ll be busy for one. We don’t have to kill 4 hours between classes on my retreats, 1.5 hours max and then we keep going – learning and growing from this amazing science called yoga, pranayama and meditation. And if the sadness and the regrets come up, let them. You are all amazing, courageous human beings and why not embrace the darkness in the company of others who are all walking a similar path? Once you turn to face the shadow there is nowhere else to go but up and into the light.

We live life through 3 energy centres - head, heart and abdomen. The forces of Thinking, Feeling and Willing. The more these centres are aligned in a person, the more that person will be able to manifest their soul’s purpose or dharma. So how do we do this? For the head centre, this means we must be able to concentrate, go silent and pay attention to our thoughts without distractions. If you can’t go silent how on earth are you going to identify which thoughts are truly yours and which ones are external, imposed or habitual? Which thoughts are true? Every truthful expression brings us closer to our essence, every dishonest one leads us further away.

For the heart centre this requires us to feel everything, all our emotions without projecting them outwards. We must embrace these emotions like we are holding a child. Without judgement, without resistance. By embracing the gift of that emotional energy, we can illuminate our entire being.

The will centre is activated by action and movement. Cultivating the discipline to follow through on decisions you have made is essential. Without the will forces, any thought or intentions stays just that. Just a thought, frozen in time, no action, no change in the world. During our Silent Yoga Retreat we will experience all these energies: your thoughts, your feeling and your desire to act upon those insights.
Fabulous stuff! I hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margot

19/10/2025

YIN Yoga tomorrow with Sound Healing , all classes, all week: Mon 20/10/25 - Sat 25/10/25. Bring your bolsters and blocks students for a wonderful week of YIN with Sound healing. Love and namaste Margot

13/10/2025

De- armouring our bodies. We’ve all had times in our lives when everything is working out – it’s like we’re blessed with a lucky star and the opportunities, people and good fortune just seem to fall into our laps. These are rare occasions when we are in the “flow” of life and can’t seem to put a foot wrong. In the world of frequency, we would say that you are aligned with your future self and that universe you are operating from, is free flowing energy. For most of us this state doesn’t last, and we revert back to our ordinary lives and often bad habits.

Why can’t we stay in that elevated state of congruence? From a brain perspective your basal ganglia forms neural pathways through a cue-routine-reward loop. Over time, this process becomes automatic, creating a shortcut your brain is reluctant to abandon. So, if the bad habits and the restricted energy are all part of this familiar routine, you’ll drop out of the flow state and go back to a life which is familiar and “safe”. In yoga we call these grooves in the mind your samskaras, bad habits and familiar memories and emotions that drag us back to the same old, same old.
Wilhelm Reich stated that: The life of an individual is the life of his body. A person who doesn’t breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn’t move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn’t feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. If his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body. And all these restrictions develop as a means of survival in a society that denies body values in favour of power, prestige and possessions.

Reich was the father of ‘de-armouring’ the body. People build up defences or ‘armour’ due to stresses of everyday life, shock trauma and negative thought patterns. Armouring restricts and blocks the free flow of energy in the body, keeping us in patterned behaviours that produce dysfunction, illness and premature aging. We walk around inside a body that is bound by pain tapes of the past. Armouring blocks the flow of energy through the chakras, which in turn depletes the organs associated with those chakras. Thus, our holistic body system becomes compromised and separates us from a natural connection to Source.

On yoga retreat (https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats) we will be using Reichian physical movements and Conscious Connected Breathwork as part of our de-armouring therapy. As we de-armour the body we will allow suppressed emotions and memories to surface and integrate, leading to nervous system regulation, greater body awareness, increased flexibility, and renewed vitality.

We are much more than our body. We are much more than who we imagine ourselves to be. As sacred humans, we are interconnected with all forms of all things within Creation. Yet, most of the time we walk around asleep to the grandeur of our potential. From Anodea Judith: The body remembers what the mind forgets. Releasing armour is not weakness, it is the beginning of real strength. Its going to be an amazing retreat! Hope you can join us!
Love and namaste Margot

11/10/2025