About Christa

 

Christa was born in Melbourne, Australia and moved to Sweden in 2004.   She has practiced yoga for over 20 years, and became a Yoga Alliance certified Hatha yoga teacher in 2016.  Christa has practiced a variety of yoga styles including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Jivamukti, Bikram, Yin, and Restorative, as well as Pranayama (yogic breathing), and has taught both adults and children. 

 

In 2016 Christa made the move from a career as a medical research scientist to follow her two passions of natural-medicine and yoga, retraining as a yoga teacher and nutritional therapist.   

 

Christa started practicing Iyengar/Hatha yoga at university in the 1990s and adopted a daily yoga practice as an integral part of her lifestyle ever since having children. 

 

Christa taught Vinyasa-flow style classes for employees and students at the Karolinska Institute for three years, and is currently teaching yoga at Ballet international.  She has also taught yoga for children.

 

Christa also has a background in dance (classical ballet, jazz, funk), Tai-chi, and Tae Kwon Do.  Aside from yoga, she runs, swims, cycles, and tries to get outside and connect with the nature as much as possible.    

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About yoga with Christa

 

Christa normally teaches a Vinyasa-flow style class where you are led through a sequence of positions and movements that naturally flow from one position to the next, systematically strengthening and softening up the whole body. 

 

Christa is trained in Hatha yoga, which encompasses the original foundations of most forms of physical yoga practiced today (eg. Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa), including both the philosophy of yoga and the physical practice.  

The aim of Hatha yoga practice is to integrate the breath with moving the body into a series of positions (Asanas) to release tensions to enable both the body and the mind to be at ease.   Yoga works with strength, flexibility and balance. The yogic Asanas were developed to stretch, strengthen, stimulate muscles, organs, connective tissue, promoting the flow of oxygen and removal of cellular waste in parts of the body often left deprived in our daily lives of restricted and unvaried  and unnatural physical activities.   

 

Integrating the breath with postures and transitions between postures helps to calm the mind.  Just as our breath is affected by our state of mind, by controlling the breath, we are able to influence our state of mind.  Learning the habit of controlled breathing can help us in situations of stress and anxiety, and during yoga practice the integration of the breath with movements between postures facilitates mental focus, and a shift from sympathetic (flight-or-fight) activation to the parasympathetic (calming) nervous system.  The postures promote flow of circulation of blood, lymph, bile and energise the body and mind.

 

Yoga is amazing for reducing stress and anxiety, promoting circulation and flow of bodily fluids, to promote vitality, improve removal of waste build-up in tissues. We stretch, twist, invert, allowing the body to move in ways it does not do in our every-day lives.  This can help our bodies adjust to a more balanced physiological state.   Whether you are sedentary, athletic, or in-between, regular yoga practice is a great way to get the mind and body at ease, to feel great and enjoy life.  It does not matter if you are stiff or flexible, strong or weak.  Yoga can be adapted for each body and its needs, and limitations.  A yogi once said: ‘Saying you are too stiff for yoga, is like saying you are too dirty to have a bath’.