Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree

01/02/2026

Deep Listening:
Our Silent Yoga Retreat coming up soon (20/3 - 22/3/26), Springbrook QLD
https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats/
is designed to be an intimate journey within. It’s not for the fainthearted, as you will confront lots of stuff inside you that you have never noticed or even bothered to get to know. And when we think about journeying within, we always think about our thoughts. Our monkey mind. All those things we must do, the lists piling up and the other voices in our head – from our loved ones, your inner critic and even those annoying jingles and snatches of popular songs.

But what would happen if you were able to switch off the mind, would there then be true silence in your world? No way. When we switch off the mind, as we are doing on this retreat, eventually those inner voices cease – but then your body rises to the occasion and asks for attention. Why? Why do I hurt here? What is this heaviness? Why have you ignored this pain, just here, for so long? So, you don’t get really get true silence or total peace, but you do start to develop an awareness and a deep intimacy with the only person on Earth who will be with you through the good times and the bad times and when you exit this planet – yourself. Just you. So, this retreat is a really lovely chance to get to know this miraculous, faithful body as we switch off the busy, bossy mind.

We all have a deep yearning for intimacy. To be listened to so deeply, in the presence of someone who has all your needs at heart. Someone who won't interrupt, offer unsolicited advice (unless asked) and someone who will just hold the space as you verbalise all those tight, dark, hard things you’ve been holding inside for so long. That someone will be you. To be present to yourself, with mindful awareness is an act of profound intimacy. And this is a huge act of trust. We have all grown up in cultures which honour the extroverted, the accumulation of stuff, the busyness of life and we’ve learned to ignore our wounds and our longing in our rush to live life. It’s hard to stay present and be respectful to ourselves in a world where everyone is fighting to be first to the finish post, and no one wants to pause and listen.

Yoga practice offers us one of the greatest of human possibilities – the possibility of awakening. In this we must listen to the whole of ourselves, our body’s cries for attention, the unhappy thoughts in our minds and to step back and see how we fit into this bigger context of life. Because we aren’t an island. We are affected by this vast soup of noise, and energy, and influence tugging at us this way and that. So, on this weekend together, you will feel how difficult this is: to encounter all the stories you have held to protect yourself from the suffering in life. You will face stories of grief and fear and sense the emptiness and loss of opportunities never taken. You will realise the reality of the impermanence in all things, the cycle of change and death. And through all of this, the fire of your truth and your silence, you will emerge powerful, free and lighter and so very joyous. As Buddha would say, "You will hear the lion's roar". It’s the path of the Boddhisatva, the Warrior.
Hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margot

25/01/2026

NO Yoga Monday 26th Jan 2026 - its Australia Day! I hope everyone has a wonderful day and stays cool. Back to normal from Tuesday 27/1/26. Love and Namaste Margot

21/01/2026

Vibrational healing:
We have a Silent Yoga retreat coming up soon in Springbrook QLD, Fri 20/3 – Sun 22/3/26), https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats/
and its is all about you, the attendee, trying various forms of vibrational healing, and in just one weekend, seeing how they can make a difference to how you feel. We’re living in a funny time in the world. There is so much information, new and old, so much hidden information coming to light and a large chunk of ordinary people are seeking the truth and some kind of middle ground in a culture that values extremes.

A good example is health. Did you know that vibrational medicine was very well respected 120 years ago? Practices like yoga, breathwork, homeopathy, sound healing and reiki, to name a few, are all considered a form of vibrational healing. In the USA alone, at the turn of the last century, there were 200 hospitals using remedies like homeopathy to treat an assortment of diseases. Beautifully non-invasive, with no side effects, the vibrational approach is a gentle way of coaxing your body to come back into balance using natural principles of nature. These modalities will never replace the allopathic model for really aggressive forms of disease, but they are a great compliment to treatment plans and should be the first choice for prevention and the treating of milder ailments, mind-body ailments (like auto- immunes which have a huge emotional element) and neurological challenges. Vibrational healing addresses the whole of the human, every layer, not just the physical.

Your body is like an orchestra. You have a signature sound. It’s like mine; we are both human. Animals, trees, the earth etc have a different signature sound to humans. But your sound is unique to you. It’s a reflection of your lifestyle, your trauma load, your ancestry and is influenced by where you live. And each organ inside you and your bones, your muscles etc all have their own vibratory signatures, like an electrical signal. Now let’s say something is off. You have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, that trauma load from childhood, which you have successfully dodged for 40 odd years, is starting to show cracks. Your life isn’t working the way it used to, and you suspect you can no longer ignore the toll it’s taken on your body.

So, like the 2nd violin in the string section of the orchestra, you sound off. Initially you only affect the violin section, but eventually the whole orchestra starts to sound wrong. We have several choices to fix this. We could drug you and numb you down, so we don’t hear that off bit anymore and you don’t negatively affect the orchestra. It’s a patch solution, doesn’t fix the problem but that’s the Western approach. We could use surgery and cut off your offending bit that sounds wrong. That would fix it for good, but you have paid the price, you’re missing a piece of you. Or we could give you back your sheet music to help you find and fix the missing vibratory signature and bring you back to wholeness so the whole of you is online again, vibrating at your perfect pitch and adding to the beautiful sound of the orchestra.

Put like this, it all makes sense. And that photo above of the starfish. That's Cymatics, which is the study of how Sound (or Vibration) shapes matter into intricate geometric patterns. Could you use Vibration to shape a better version of you? Come and join us, I’m filling fast! Yoga, Breathwork, Meditation, Ceremony, Chanting, Toning and Silence: we are using so many vibrational tools on this Retreat you’ll leave the Retreat like the finely tuned violin you deserve to be! Namaste Margot

18/01/2026

Dear students. So wonderful to be back on the mats practicing yoga with you all! Its YIN Yoga tomorrow: Mon 19/1/26 - Sat 24/1/26. All classes, all week. Bring your blocks and bolsters students for a delicious class of YIN. And our Meditation Schedule is on the website www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au. The meditation class. A normal yoga class with a slightly longer themed meditation drawing from the Vedic, Theravada, Mahayana, Vajyarana and Zen Buddhism. Cant wait!

15/01/2026

Balancing Energy with your Voice
A big part of our Silent Yoga Retreat coming up soon (https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats/)
on the 20/3 – 22/3/26 in Springbrook is finding tools and teachings you, the attendee, can take away from the weekend so that you keep up the changes and healing you will experience on this retreat. I love empowering my students and keeping it simple, and these Retreats continue to attract an amazing group of fellow yogis who continue to grow: in health, knowledge, spiritual depth and love. As every retreat is different, this group of yogis will find something, some teaching or practice that will keep them on that path of self-realisation. And growth as a human being, individuation, becoming who you were meant to be and stepping onto your true life path (dharma) is the most important thing we could do in this lifetime.

Vocal toning was one of those teachings that the first time I tried it (it was mantra chanting) I woke up the next day with these ancient, magical, deeply healing Sanskrit mantras reverberating in my head and I felt madly energised, like I had drunk several cups of coffee – bursting with energy. It was as if an old primitive memory had woken up and woken me up. I’ve never had any formal training in singing or music (actually my signing voice is terrible), although I do like public speaking and I know the power of words, so this idea of chanting out loud was fairly unique. But when the Universe beckons, I follow, and Nada Yoga was added to my teachings.

Nada Yoga means "union through sound." It is the ancient spiritual art and science of inner transformation through sound and tone. Meditation on sound is one universal path to self-realisation. This Retreat is all about resonance, vibration, your electrical field (your biofield) and frequency. So, we are using vocal toning, mantra and chanting to change your electric body. We've chanted mantra together heaps, but what is vocal toning?

Toning is the creation of extended vocal sounds on a single vowel in order to experience the sound and its effects in other parts of the body. No melody, no words, no rhythm, and no harmony - just the sound of the vibrating breath. This tool is free, you can haul it out anytime and elicit a form of healing, meditation, calm or peace for yourself. In fact, your voice is so powerful you could use that same tool to help others. Think of how our children loved us singing them to sleep. Your voice was their safety and comfort as they drifted off.

Vocal toning and humming also increases nitric oxide, which can reduce blood pressure, slow the heart rate, and slow brain wave speeds from high functioning beta to slower meditative states of alpha, theta, delta. Sound healing is not just about audible frequencies, but also about rhythms and the frequency of rhythms within the body. The breath is one of the most fundamental rhythms we can access for reducing stress and restoring peace within the body. When we’re singing, toning, humming, and extending the length of that sound, we are essentially extending the length of the exhale to be longer than the inhale.

Super exciting and so much fun! Hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margot

13/01/2026

This is for my Tuesday 9.30am Zamia Theatre students. Apologies for not making class. My car blew a hose coming up the mountain and I had to wait for the RACQ tow truck. An epic wait! Thank goodness for meditation and calming thoughts! Thank you Sarah and Janelle for passing on the message and to all of you for understanding! Everything is back to normal from tomorrow Wednesday 6pm and Saturday 8am. Love and hugs Margot

10/01/2026

Our Yoga Retreat coming up soon, 20/3 – 22/3/26: https://www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au/yoga-retreats/
and a central part of our yoga practice will be to tackle the art of Forgiveness. This is a retreat about your resonance, your energy, your coherence and the health of your biofield – that subtle energy field that surrounds and permeates all living organisms, acting as an information and energy matrix that links mind, body, and spirit. A healthy biofield reflects overall well-being, and any anomalies or disturbances in your biofield potentially reflect an underlying illness.

An unforgiven memory is a burden, a dark spot in your biofield. The energy of non-forgiveness is low-frequency, dense energy that can manifest as a blockage or distortion in your electrical field. In Buddhism, non-forgiveness is often referred to as poison, trapping a person in a cycle of bitterness, anger, and resentment, consuming mental energy through rumination (replaying the offense), and leading to significant mental and physical ill health.

But the reality is that the act of forgiveness is hard, and for most of us sometimes impossible. The idea of releasing the incident and liberating yourself is fabulous in theory and our rational minds totally grasp this truth: forgiveness sets you free. So, we work at it (it can take years), think we are over the horrible traumatic incident and then bang, something triggers us, and all the horror of that terrible time comes back. We realise we haven’t actually forgiven anything, it’s still there, like an unwanted demon, lurking in the shadows. This is the reality for me and so many of my yoga students. Our rational minds and our loving hearts really resonated with practices like the Metta Prayer and Tonglen, but deep down we knew we had not quite untangled ourselves completely from that trauma.

And then I did a Ta***ic Shamanic Workshop where we were working with a fundamental Ta***ic teaching that the universe is interconnected and full of active, spiritual beings rather than just material things. A worldview, where we are all part of a vast community of spiritual entities and we interact with them through rituals, prayer, meditation and breath. It was during a meditation when I realised forgiveness was all about the victim reclaiming something that had been stolen from them through the traumatic incident. And the process of forgiveness was forgiving ourselves for letting this happen, for not seeing it coming, for been helpless and unaware or for actually perpetuating this horrible incident. What was stolen? Was it your dignity, your honour, your financial security, your trust or your innocence perhaps? And even if you were a co-conspirator of the trauma can you forgive yourself the shame, regret, embarrassment, remorse? All these energies are tangible, they have an electrical charge. So, in this process, we forgive ourselves for being human. We call back what was lost and reclaim our wholeness, the whole of our electrical being.

It’s an exciting workshop, very courageous and hugely empowering. Hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margotand

10/01/2026

Happy New Year everyone!
Yoga Classes resume on Monday 12/1/26 Canungra 9.30am, and all classes, at all venues, follow the timetable below.
I teach Classical Yoga: a discipline of mind, body and spirit. The many variations of Modern yoga primarily focus on physical fitness, but Classical Yoga incorporates a physically fit body (asana), breath control (pranayama) and the ability to still the mind to prepare you for the whole object of yoga: connecting to your true self. Leaving behind the anxiety, the mental chatter, the negative behaviours and the stress of modern life.
Classical Yoga is not an escape, it’s a lifetime journey of self-growth. The real experience of yoga is to discover yourself through mental discipline, ethical conduct, breath control, and meditation, not just physical postures (asanas).

The classical system of Hatha Yoga that I teach is not a hybrid or popularized version of yoga, but a direct lineage that is taught by the teacher to the student. I’m initiated into the Kriya lineage - an ancient, scientific yoga and meditation system using asanas, breath control (pranayama), mantras, and mudras to accelerate spiritual development, achieve deep inner stillness, and attain higher states of consciousness, focusing on revitalizing life energy (prana) in the spine and brain.

I also teach Ta**ra yoga, YIN yoga, am a Sound Healer and a Rebirthing Breath worker. I also run weekend Yoga Retreats and Workshops. Classical yoga can accommodate all bodies, all ages and all fitness levels. So, no prior experience is needed. Hop onto my website www.yogaunderthebodhitree.com.au
to find out more and contact me if you would like to join a class.
Namaste Margot

04/01/2026

Vibrations of the Soul
A bit more divine information on vibration and frequency. All inspired by our Yoga Retreat coming up soon 20/3/26 - 22/3/26, Theosophical Centre, Springbrook, QLD which is filling fast.

What if your thoughts and emotions were not just fleeting states of mind, but actual energy frequencies that shape your physical health and the world around you? The attached diagram is a simplified version of the The Energy Scale That Maps Our Inner World – by Dr. David Hawkins. This was a concept that radically shaped the nature of my yoga classes and yoga retreats. When I discovered Hawkins’ work, I realised that the electrical body of the person, the frequency they vibrated at, not only came from their physical bodies, but their emotional and mental bodies as well. This is when I realised that no amount of yoga and healthy eating could shift these deep-seated problems until we addressed the trauma behind them. The rest is history. If I can help my students somatically (from the body) release traumas from childhood and even intergenerational trauma, they move up on the map of consciousness and are no longer shackled by low frequency default emotions.

Here’s a simplified breakdown:
Level 20 - 100: shame, guilt, apathy and fear: weakens the body and immune system.
Level 200: courage (turning point): threshold into empowering, healing energy.
Level 300 - 400: willingness, acceptance: enhances emotional resilience and balance.
Level 500: love, compassion: promotes deep healing and joy.
Level 600 - 700+: peace, enlightenment: spiritual transcendence and lasting vitality.

200 is the critical dividing line. Below this threshold, people are ruled by fear, anger, or despair—states that are energetically draining and often linked to physical illness. Above 200, individuals begin to reclaim their personal power, align with truth, and tap into energies that support healing, vitality, and inner peace.

Many people fall ill not because of bacteria or external factors alone, but because their emotional vibration is too low. When we live in fear, hold grudges, dwell in guilt, or resist life, our frequency drops—and the body, being energy-sensitive, responds with imbalance and dis-ease. Chronic stress, suppressed anger, and emotional numbness are not just psychological burdens—they create an environment where illness can thrive. If a person’s vibrational frequency is above 200, they are less likely to become ill.

The crucial point is that by changing ourselves we can change the world.

So how are we going to raise our vibration and leave the retreat even more healthy and joyous? Silence and meditation will allow us to focus on divine compassion, love and light and raise our frequency. Yoga and movement will open up the channels of the body. Forgiveness: forgiveness is not for others, it’s a gift you give yourself to release energetic baggage. Surrounding ourselves with uplifting influences – nature, space, sky and fellow students who inspire joy. Honesty: you’ll let go of the story, the one you’ve been telling yourself for years, and start the process of rewriting a new script. Invoke a higher consciousness – chanting, mantra, sound, sacred Bija seed sounds – these are magical syllables that are shown to uplift energy and bring healing calm.

Wellness begins from within. By raising our frequency and consciousness - choosing love over fear, and aligning with truth and compassion, we can live not only healthier lives—but more joyful, meaningful ones. Your mind is more powerful than you think. And your heart—when opened fully—has the power to heal not just your body, but the world around you.

31/12/2025

Welcome 2026! A video clip I took in Kalk Bay, Western Cape , South Africa. These two amazing musicians embody all the energy we hope the new year holds: joy, fun, action and the sheer delight of doing something we love. Love and namaste Margot

31/12/2025

Wishing all my students a wonderful 2025/ 2026 New Years Eve celebration! And yippee to see the end of 2025! Shedding our snakeskins and moving into a more optimistic, truthful, change- driven 2026, the year of the Fire Horse. 2025 was chokkers with challenges. Who can forget Cyclone Alfred hovering offshore, wrecking its destruction on the SE QLD coast. We held our Yoga Retreat at the Theosophical Centre in Springbrook the weekend straight afterwards as we moved back into normal life. It was so good to do a whole weekend of beautiful yoga and laugh! My Guru and mentor Doreena Scales retired . I'm so grateful for her guidance. Buddha said: "These teachings are a one time offer. Take them while you can or lose this opportunity forever." This goes for all of us. Opportunities to learn and grow mentally, spiritually and physically are rare, so grab these teachings while you can!

I've always taken that philosophy to heart and when the International Breathwork Conference 2025 came up - Fraser Island, K'Gari the first time offered in Australia, I knew I would be learning from the worlds best breath workers. Such an honour. Taking my sound healing training to new heights and falling in love with the Gong. Sound and vibration - joined with yoga, breathwork and meditation - you will never be the same! In fact resonance, electricity and light have inspired my whole Yoga Retreat coming up in 2026 (Fri 20/3 - Sun 22/3/26). A Yoga retreat geared to teach my students to tune their bodies and minds like a Stradivarius violin.

A quick hop back to RSA to see family - walking with the elephants. So beautiful. And our last class for the year - 3 very special yogis joining hands. Penny and her dear little boys. What a gorgeous year of yoga! Thank you students for joining me. Love and namaste Margot

28/12/2025