Daphne Manhattan

Daphne began practicing Yoga at 12 alongside her mother via a VHS tape in our lounge room. She still remembers the postures, the meditations, and the aesthetic of that tape, because that was her first experience of finding peace within herself. In her late teens and twenties, she took all kinds of beginner courses and general classes. She followed teachers from studio to studio across SEQ that felt connected to the practices they shared and always wanted to go deeper into the practice without knowing why. It took completing a teacher training to understand why the practice felt like home. And to understand that despite not always living a lifestyle that was classically yogic, she still returned back to the practice when she drifted off centre. After 4 years of immersive training in Biomedical approaches to yoga and yoga therapy, she has begun grounding her own practices in the viniyoga tradition from the Krisnamacarya lineage. After decades of focusing on physical practice, she has moved towards a more holistic focus that includes philosophy and chanting. This has challenged how she practices asana and allowed her to approach the practice through the beginner's mind. Yoga as a negative science and a model of psychology has allowed the rest of Daphne’s life more space to just be.

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