leanne natkaniec
yoga
Taking you further in your yoga quest
उत्साहात्साहसाद्धैर्यात्तत्त्व-जञानाश्छ निश्छयात |
जन-सङ्ग-परित्यागात्ष्हड्भिर्योगः परसिद्ध्यति
'Yoga succeeds by these six: enthusiasm, openness, courage, knowledge of the truth, determination and solitude'
- Hathapradipika 1,16
'Authentic teachings made relevant for you,
the modern student'
The Teacher
As your teacher you will find Leanne passionate and enthusiastic to help you on your personal journey, yet calm and caring in her approach. She constantly seeks to find the balance between teaching yoga postures and providing enough insight into the true path of yoga beyond. Learned knowledge and personal experience must come together for the spiritual practise to take roots and truly have meaning.
Leanne is qualified to teach Ashtanga Vinyasa, Power and Yin yoga styles and her teaching style is rooted in the Astanga or Eight- Limbed yoga philosophy method, her own personal practise, yoga scriptures, breathing and meditation techniques. Whether a dynamic or restful class style Leanne wants you to understand and feel for yourself the spiritual process of unlearning, releasing, trusting and letting go to attain, even if it is just a glimpse, of the natural liberated state within all of us. Yoga is not a state of mind or body, but consciousness or being.
Schedule, classes and teachings
Practise tips, advice and discussions on Leanne's Youtube channel or check out her Instagram IGTV
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"Leanne is a wonderful yoga teacher. She combines her vast knowledge with the soothing but confident tone needed to both relax her students and enable them to get the best out of every session."
-Debbie
Contact Leanne and find out how she can help YOU on your very own yoga journey
Practise with Leanne from the comfort of your own home with online sessions! Simply email info@leannenatkaniecyoga.com to discuss your unique personal situation. Rates are flexible for those in need.
The Practitioner
Leanne is a mostly self- taught home practitioner of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga but she embraces other useful practises and styles with teachers who she trusts. She also meditates daily using the Vipassana technique. Through the years the relationship that Leanne has had with the practise has gone through many different phases and brought up many changes and transformations, not physically, that too, but emotionally and spiritually. Through her own personal practise she experienced that which the words, stories and techniques do their best to explain, or keep secret within the older texts. She believes that only through a personal practise can this occur, yoga is not easily gifted, bought or learned, it must be felt for oneself.
She says,
"It may at first seem that the yoga practise on the mat is about our bodies, our arms, our legs, our shapes, our ability to balance flexibility and strength and yet over time the focus moves away from the physical...far way. What we are really working with is not the body, but the mind within; the body and the postures are just the physical work, the tools, playground, the scene, the way to grasp it, and from the first breath this tangible, visible, physical material and techniques command us to pay attention, focus, and remain in the present moment only.... setting up a control boundary around our bodies and our mats the practise has this way of narrowing down the limitless variables of life so that we may start to observe them more clearly, initially we are amazed by all that we had not noticed when we were rushing about, self important and blindly caught up in the world. This world that we get caught up in not only exists outside but also inside, as we each carry our own world of thoughts and snares with us around in our heads.
Aided by the quiet comfort of a steady practise the mind relaxes and begins to learn that it is actually OK to relax, to give up the control, to slow down, to stop chasing the next thing! In this first stage the mind ( or should I say 'We') starts to let go of the external, superficial or physical layer and gradually and naturally starts to descend within, through the breath , every breath , and every part of the breath and it's sensations and we begin to discover the splendour and richness of our forgotten inner worlds, not the superficial layer of thoughts and snares but the deeper layers that lie covered beneath.
We learn, if we are lucky, and with time, to let go of all that bubbles to the surface for us along the way... for you see each practise is different, as is each moment, there is just no point of trying to over-examine, analyse and 'find out why' about everything that comes up, it is endless work, if we get stuck here, as we all do for a time, we will lose the inner path which continues on to deeper more subtle layers of discovery.... The practise spotlights parts of us and makes things surface for observation and analysis, which afterwards become identified and dismissed, or rather acknowledged and accepted. Over more time and this ability to learn about ourselves and then let go we may just transcend beyond it all, to a place where we still may be in the act of moving, positioning our body, breathing and knowing and yet it all happens somewhat spontaneously, in the background, at a distance, on the surface...
As our focus gets softer and softer and we learn to let go let go and keep moving onwards and inwards through our work we find that the mind we started out with has also loosened it's grip on us... it's like whatever we thought we were before, we are released from. If we reach this stage we have made space for consciousness, which can be thought of as shy or subtle/ fine, to be experienced because the more gross mind and logic have been quietened. Only when we have this willingness to not only take responsibility for, but to rise above the control of ego, mind, breath and body can we reach the glory of the deeper levels of the heart and Spirit. And then the whole process of the awakening becomes unveiled. Then we know in an instant that which we call yoga and why we do it.
This is the way of Yoga for me, this transcendence to freedom.'
-Leanne
And so through his practise Leanne came to be steadier, calmer and kinder towards herself, others and the world we all share. Yoga will teach you to see the world from a clearer, truer perspective if you let it; away from your everyday mind and to the view point of the Self where everything is seen clearly for what it is and in this way the world becomes easier to navigate and much much more beautiful! We appreciate life!
As a lone practitioner Leanne's practise has evolved alongside serious study and research into the method and it's techniques and she closely follows the work of her fellows and elders for inspiration, support and general spiritual guidance. Of these teachers the work of David Garrigues is her biggest influence and guide, through his work she became passionate about the energetic dynamism, the subtle energetic work and the philosophical and tantric works that illustrate this and the divinity of this great practise.
Recently her personal practise has evolved into a phase of softness and deep listening and nurturing. In a hard, unstable and restricted modern world she found refuge and comfort in a more personal and tender practise. Releasing herself from expectations both set by herself and the tradition she has come to feel the quality of peace and yoga at the level of the heart and no longer has a rigid or linear approach to the physical practise.
The Yoga Student
(and the Ashtanga Geek)
As well as her research into the Hatha and Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga techniques Leanne is always immersed in a much broader yogic study too through classic and modern scriptures, texts, teachers and scholars. She has a passion for study of yoga philosophy, the early metaphysical yogic body, hatha yoga techniques and the course of evolution of our modern Hatha and Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga practises. She will also seek out those teachings from modern day Ashtanga teachers and elders in order to refine her own technique and make the practise safer, more sustainable and enjoyable for all!
Recent studies with teachers/ scholars:
-Skills of Ancient India: Shared Physical Modalities in Hindu Wrestling, Martial Arts, and Yoga with Riki Warren and Eddie Stern
-Mysore Foundations Course with David Garrigues
-Ashtanga Yoga Workshop Series with Harmony Slater
-The Hathabhyasapaddhati , A precursor to modern yoga with Jason Birch and Jacqueline Hargreaves @The Iluminescent
-The HathaPradipika with Seth Powell @Yogic Studies
Second Half of Second Series Workshop with David Garrigues
Recent Self Study:
-New Age Yoga, Veren Kiki Warren
-Marrtial and Healing Traditions of India, Michael DeMarco
Raja Yoga, Conquering the internal nature, Swami Vivekananda
-The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga, Srivatsa Ramaswami
-Paths to God, Living the Bhagavad Gita, Ram Dass
-Roots of Yoga, James Mallinson and Mark Singelton
-The Yoga Matrix, with Richard Freeman
-Yoga Makaranda, Sri T.Krishnamacharya
the truth maker
What good is practise and study without contemplation and integration?!
Leanne muses and questions as she continues to discover the ways of yoga through experience and study, as is the self- enquiry nature of any spiritual practise. She has found that writing, discussing and journaling has helped her to clarify and consolidate the experiences and knowledge so that they make sense within herself and within her role as a human being and a yoga teacher in this modern world. These words naturally pour into notebooks, blogs, videos, social media and poems...
Go to the Ashtanga Geek Blog to read articles, diary entries, notebook pages and poems. Or even choose audio or video blogs on Soundcloud and Youtube
You can also SIGN UP to be notified each time Leanne publishes a new blog entry!
Don't forget to also check out Leanne's IGTV Catalogue on Instagram for post practise musings , mini philosophy talks and discussions about yoga in the modern world
insights
questions
internal
battle
changing perspectives
despair
joy
reality
perception truth
raja
hatha
ashtanga
philosophy
technique
wisdom
faith
samadhi
samsara
why
values
heart
spirit
human
consciousness
journey
within
unfolding
"The world needs people like you, the ones that doubt and tell their students that they're doubting, struggling, questioning. Cause that is the real thing. That is the real life. And that is also the real yoga"
-Margaux
'After so much self- discipline, sacrifice and arduous mental mountain climbing to achieve success in yoga, the modern yogi must be braver still! She must make herself vulnerable to fully experience life again! The self- mastery of yoga puts her in the eye of the swirling storm of prakriti, but where is the sense of willfully remaining apart and withdrawn when this yoga love and wisdom shines out of her?
What good is the yoga if bound up and locked away like a box of jewels or a great secret? And so she flings open again the gates of her body and the senses of her mind to experience this world that is out of her control and always will be. For she is alive and is here to serve!
...
I feel like I have come full circle and I am back where I started, or so it appears on the outside, only my eyes, my perception and my soul feel different. I look the same but i have this feeling of not quite knowing who i am anymore, but within me there is this electric current of excitement. I want to talk about this unexpected new turn in my yoga path, or should i call it a circle, or a sphere?! I know I sound like I am talking in riddles but that’s how it feels! Somehow I have stumbled into a new ‘layer’ or ‘depth’ of understanding reality and all here is not as it seems, I am pretty sure that I am facing my first hesitant and brave steps into Seventh Series! I am wary and alert like a lost thing in a new planet but i am somehow tingling with a freshness and interest in life, an exuberance that I haven’t felt in years! I feel a great change here, let me explain….'
Excerpt from ' Suffering to Samadhi and back again'
The powers are plenty
Overcome Idleness
Tamper down Ego
Seduce your senses
Sharpen your mind
Hone your awareness
and Magnify!
The stick that stirs
The bath plug
The eye of the storm
The deepest ocean
and the darkest cave
Bedrock of the subtle
Magnificent as the sun
Magnetic field
Something hidden
and unbelievably great
So hidden and intangible
Yet fully reachable to the relentless
Communicate and control
To revel in wisdom and grace
And quiet superpower
'MULABANDHA'
A poem inspired by verses of the Hathapradipika
