Last year I was lucky enough to take some time out in Queenstown over Queen’s Birthday Weekend, attending a very special yoga retreat at The Sherwood Hotel.
The founder of Urban Ashram yoga studio on Brown Street, Nikki was the person responsible for truly ‘turning me on’ to yoga, after many attempts and, quite often, failures. To say that meeting Nikki was like a bolt of kindness and understanding from out of the blue would be putting it mildly - she and her self-developed Ralston Method of yoga and overall wellness have the possibility to be true life changers.
"I think of myself as a yoga educator, empowering people who come to me with tools and awareness that last a lifetime," she says, and her Brown Street studio has become so much more than just a place to practise yoga. It’s a little community of its own, a safe space for devoting time to yourself with a fun and caring vibe.
Towards the end of last year Nikki opened a second studio in the North Shore suburb of Browns Bay, which she says has a completely different feel to Ponsonby but is evolving in its own right. “My Brown Street studio has such an established community now,” she says with a smile, “and the students that come there are really special to me. They are people from all walks of life but the one commonality that they have is that they really care about the whole practice of yoga. They appreciate the mind benefits as much as the body benefits, which is what I believe is just so important.”
She shares her time between both studios, and has also recruited some new faces from amongst the newly minted, supremely talented students who took part in her inaugural 250-hour teacher training course last year. “They all have different areas of interest but I trust them implicitly,” says the proud team leader. “I know their classes are going to be incredibly well sequenced and people will love them, and I also have Amber from the Ponsonby studio teaching at both locations, too.”
Having a great team in place allows Nikki to travel with her work as well, including to Queenstown again this Queen’s Birthday. She will be working there with local yogi Claire Stewart as her right-hand woman, and the venue will once again be the magical Sherwood. Trips to Brisbane and around the country to teach are also in the diary, and she will be holding some special events and workshops in Auckland at both of her studios. “The Browns Bay studio is literally minutes from the beach,” she tells me, “so it lends itself to all kinds of special events and, hopefully, day-long retreats. Ponsonby has its own urban vibe, and I’m releasing details of specialty workshops there all the time.”
She has also introduced a Saturday afternoon community koha class happening at 4:30pm in Ponsonby, with all benefits going to Women’s Refuge. A well-balanced class, it is taught by a rotating roster of the studio’s fabulous teachers, and is a great way to experience different styles of yoga and give back to a great cause.
Nikki started her first business at age 24, doing corporate massage back when the concept of wellness in the workplace was still relatively new. Around this time - after a few years dabbling in yoga on and off - she discovered Iyengar yoga, which at first was a great way to stretch out her sport-honed body. “I straight away thought ‘ooh I really like this!’” she told me many years ago, “so I started going more and more and had a feeling that one day I’d like to teach it.”
After her daughter Ahlianah turned two, she started training to be a yoga teacher in her own right. “I had a difficult birth and really appreciated the difference yoga could make to my body afterwards,” she told me of her own yoga journey, “especially as things that had always came naturally to my body became so much harder. I gained a much deeper understanding of what I needed to do to feel strong again and wanted to share that knowledge with others.”
Nikki is passionate about nurturing the next generation of yoga teachers in New Zealand, with another Ralston Method 250 hour Yoga Alliance certified teacher training programme kicking off in May. Her students immerse themselves not only in the anatomical side of yoga but the philosophy and the heart of the practice as well - elements that she feels have been missing in many of the programmes currently on offer. “It’s so important that students know as much as they can about the intricacies of the bodies they will be teaching, as well as the variations out there and the limitations that people may have,” explains the passionate yogi. “They also need to recognise the more profound effects that practising asanas can have on the mind, and share that knowledge accordingly.
“I’m super passionate about raising the bar of yoga teachers in New Zealand, and there is so much to learn and understand all the time. It used to bother me that not enough was being in this country in terms of well-rounded learning, but I believe that you can’t complain about something unless you’re committed to providing a solution. (HELENE RAVLICH)
“This is my solution.”
www.urbanashram.co.nz (HELENE RAVLICH)