Morgane is TIY’s very own Bhakti Yogi. She is all love and compassion and has a deep respect for the ancient yoga teachings. Her dedication to her practice is both admirable and inspiring, she tries hard to walk the talk and we couldn’t love her more for this. We sat down to interview Morgane and learn a little bit more about her and what it means to live like a Bhakti - read below!

What led you to start practicing yoga?

I started practicing yoga around 15 years ago when I started my career as an actor and a performer. I started with a physical practice and then eventually I went further into the philosophy of it all and reading and studying it on my own. When I came back to Australia 6 years ago, I picked up my practice when I met my teachers. During this time I started my meditation practice, which has at times been very challenging, especially in the beginning. Over the years I have found strategies and the practices that have allowed me to find the doorway to stillness.

What makes you passionate about the practice?

What makes me passionate about the practice is that yoga is a practice that works. It peels away all the layers of the things that we think we are, but we are not. It shows our wounds and the things we need to work on in order to become who and what we truly are. It shows us how to deeply connect to our heart space and how to evolve as a human being and eventually to leave this lifetime in a better state than when we entered it. As we clear the karma, we are of service not just to ourselves, but to the community. Whether it is on a smaller scale to your family unit, or on the larger scale where you live out your Dharma or purpose for being. This allows you to evolve as the soul wants to and allows it to pierce through those lower levels of consciousness, closer to freedom.

Do you do any other activities or exercises to compliment your yoga practice?

In the past couple of months, I have started doing body strengthening with a PT to complement my yoga practice on a physical level. This strengthens the parts of the body that yoga may not work on and creates a strong body to hold any kind of healing that my yoga practice is shedding light on. I have a mix of gym, PT, Pilates and body strengthening. Sunrise walks and swimming are also a big part of my life. The ocean is crucial to me, I love being near the ocean and being in the ocean (when I can - temperature permitting!). I do a few laps at the beach, connecting to nature before I start my day. I find witnessing the beauty of the sunrise and being near the ocean both a mindfulness and gratitude practice. Connecting to nature and the ocean really feeds my soul and connects me to something greater than myself. I feel this both physically and energetically. I also do a lot of mantra practice. In Bhakti yoga we use mantra as a way to not just keep walking along the path of this practice, but to evolve us and for me it helps me offer this in my teaching. I have worked a lot in healing using my hands doing ZenThai massage practices and I will continue my training in Reiki and all sorts of hands on healing practices!

How long have you been meditating and do you have a preferred style?

My meditation practice started very on and off and was like this for a while. I made it a point to keep exploring the techniques to find something that would eventually work for me. There are so many different ways and we all have different ways to explore them. I have been working on a meditative practice using mantra. Whether that be singing, with the harmonium or a silent mantra to myself. For the past 4 years I have worked with a mantra teacher and I have different practices for different needs. If I feel like I need a cleanse, I will do a 21 or 40 days Chakra cleansing mantra practice. Or I might do a So Hum practice if I want to really reconnect to myself, remembering that all that I need is within. Or if I am in a fearful anxious state I might use a different kind of mantra. I have worked with my teacher to work out what is going to be supportive of what I need and when I need it. The other style of meditation that I love is a breath practice to raise the parasympathetic nervous system (your yin energy), including visualisation. I reconnected recently to candle gazing which I haven't used for years and it was lovely. Beyond mantra, I tend to connect most to the people who teach me different meditations and then the practices resonate with me. My other meditative practice is my sunrise walk. Walking in nature and observing the thoughts that come upo is as important to me as sitting for 20 minutes.

How has the practice helped shape you into the person you are today?

Wow, that's a big one! The practice and by practice I mean the full spectrum - asana, meditation, pranayama, philosophy, embodied philosophy has massively shaped me into the person I am today. It has allowed me to reconnect to who and what I truly am, even if it is just for a glimpse of a second in Savasana. It has helped me to welcome the limitations, welcome the demons that knock on the door. To sit in the discomfort, to sit in the pain, to sit in the hurt, to sit in whatever rises up at different times. It allows me to face what’s going on, rather than run away from it. As we face and accept (not necessarily agree), we are able to transcend the issues and ultimately release and evolve. It has allowed me to evolve as a human being. I am fascinated by the philosophy, the actual practice and how to embody this philosophy. The most important to me, I suppose, is how can we practice what we preach? It is one thing to be a yogi, but it is another to practice the yoga off the mat. For me that’s the most important and what an advanced practitioner is - someone who is able to transfer that learning and practice it into the mundane, everyday life with the people around them. The people they love, the people they don’t love and all the things that trigger them. For me, that’s really important and that’s what I try to do every single day and it’s not always the case. It doesn't always work out, but we try again and that’s what the practice is there for, to allow us to sit in the sensation, the discomfort, so that we can, like I said, transcend it and evolve. It has definitely helped me get stronger, both physically and energetically, really tapping into my inner strength and connect to my inner voice; that Intuition that for years I thought I didn't have and didn’t really listen to, although it was kind of there, I just didn’t pay attention to it. Those deeper practices have been really helpful to get me deeper and deeper into the works and the healing, which is what the practice is there for. Not just because it works, but because it is a choice, a commitment to be on this path. You can’t be in denial anymore and there is something very humbling and extremely rewarding about this journey that you do on your own. You create a community and you evolve into this satsang (community), but eventually all you have is the relationship between yourself and your mat, which is the basis for the work that you have to do with yourself. That work has to be done by yourself, for yourself, through yourself - as the great Iyengar would say. No one is going to throw you a yoga party because you are doing the work, but you will feel it and this will ripple into your community and start to inspire other people. In a nutshell that's how the practice has helped shape me, my belief system and what I stand for...I am constantly coming back to how I can create a bridge between myself and anything that creates separation from that. Like my teacher says, ‘the wisdom is in the questions’ and for me, that is really, really true.

What inspires you in life?

My practice. The people that I learn from and most importantly, my teachers and my healers. I have a few teachers that I have so much to learn from and I am so grateful that I have them on my path, on and off the mat. I have people who are supporting me in my healing journey. I have a very small tribe, but a very powerful tribe. What inspires me beyond these people that I have in my life, is just to live life better and make life better for myself and everyone else around me and to leave this world in a better way than when I entered this body in this lifetime. I am very passionable looking after this planet and the ocean, the ocean is my happy place. It is where my emotional being feels its best, it really feels my soul. Creativity is very important to me, it really ignites my heart and gets me going. I used to be an actor and the creativity, the performing, the singing, the dancing, it was and still is a really big part of my life. I am really grateful that I get to use those modalities like singing and music in my mantra practice and that I get to bridge the creativity with the philosophy and spiritual practices which are very dear to me. I suppose that’s the other part, the philosophy and the learning. Constantly being a student, learning and diving into those massive, sacred teachings of yoga and life and how to become a better human being, to practice what we preach. I am also very much inspired by those people who walk the talk and they are my biggest inspirations. I read a lot, I read and read and read, which is also linked to my study. I absorb and process and I take what feels right and put it into practice and I share it. It is important for me to be able to share all the things that I want and to be of service for the community, without wanting anything from it, other than to just keep on sharing the sacred teaching of yoga, which works. I do a lot of work with children and children are very inspiring, they are the best teachers to get us into the here, the now and they are a very big inspiration to live our yoga off the mat. So all that inspires me!