BY Tshegofatso Seemela
Refiloe Nyoni, yoga teacher and trainer, is passionate about yoga and advocates for its benefits throughout one’s life. An owner of Indie Hot Yoga, she offers yoga enthusiasts a safe space to practice mindfulness and gain personal mindfulness.
I discovered yoga in the midst of life, of craziness and calm. In yoga I found courage not to ignore the pieces and not to simply sweep them away. I began to accept myself as a complete human being – fallible and perfect, ever-changing and ever-growing.
I’m a registered yoga teacher and teacher trainer. I was trained by the Absolute Yoga Academy in Koh Samui, Thailand. I am also a mindfulness practitioner and I’m passionate about personal mindfulness.
After 15 years of being a yoga practitioner, these words perfectly sum up my journey: “My yoga practice is no longer the battlefield of a long-waged self-improvement project by an overachieving person. It has become what I have always hoped it would be – a place for love and acceptance.”
Indie Hot Yoga offers a variety of heated and unheated classes, including Ashtanga, Hot26, Hatha and Vinyasa, as well as less traditional classes such as Hot Pilates and Budokon. Classes cater for any fitness level, whether you’re looking to incorporate yoga into a chosen sport for improved flexibility or seeking time to connect with yourself to relieve stress, or just love yoga.
At Indie Hot Yoga we seek to create a unified community of yogis who through their practice embrace the connection between mind, body, and soul. We provide a safe, non-judgmental, and peaceful environment where everyone has the freedom to be themselves, whilst nurturing their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.
Yoga has many benefits. Practicing it as a form of low-impact exercise is good for the brain. It has been shown to lower stress hormones in our bodies while simultaneously increasing beneficial brain chemicals like endorphins and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). These feel-good chemicals help decrease anxiety and improve the mood.
I like to think of yoga as “loadshedding for the mind”. We can all consider ourselves to be power systems that have a certain amount of mental and emotional energy and when the demands are too high and the supply is too little a complete blackout is imminent.
As a form of mindful movement, yoga is a powerful tool that we can use to relieve ourselves from the pressure of our daily lives. Yoga’s incorporation of meditation and breathing with movement helps refresh our minds.
Studies show that yoga benefits cardiovascular health, the respiratory and immune systems, improve cognitive functioning as well as helps us to manage our stress.
Other physical benefits of yoga include increased flexibility, increased muscle strength, and tone, and improved respiration, energy, and vitality.
Yoga is not about being fat or skinny, it’s about being yourself. Our respective anatomies as human beings are varied; each of our bodies are different. From that point of departure, it’s not helpful to think that someone’s definition of “fat” or “skinny” will be identical to mine. It’s about working with what you have to get what you want, cultivating discipline and focus whilst working towards
When taking yoga for the purpose of weight loss, consider heated yoga. Practicing yoga in a heated environment can increase the heart rate and lead to more calories being burned through the course of the workout. This can assist with a faster progression of weight loss over time. Remember that consistency is key.
