Christina Pateras
Hatha yoga
Seasonal intensives
m: 0400 551 833
Christina Pateras is a certified Hatha Yoga teacher who started her training in 1999 at Yoga Arts in Byron Bay, Australia. Already a school teacher and yoga practitioner since 1988, she introduced yoga to primary school children in London in 1996 and was intrigued at the impact it had on the children both physically and emotionally. In 2000, she returned to London and started teaching Hatha Yoga at London’s Triyoga studio. Over the next 3 years, she was teaching up to 25 adult, teens and kids’ classes a week.
At the same time she started learning and implementing a progressive series of Hatha Yoga courses that helped to provide structure and clarity to yoga students. She also co-ran a small local yoga studio in Primrose Hill where she discovered the significant benefits of one-on-one yoga.
Between 2000 and 2004, she studied with Christian Pisano, senior Iyengar teacher and head of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Nice, France. Greatly inspired by him, she deepened her knowledge of ‘internal vinyasa’ – the underlying pattern connecting all postures, and the poetry that makes yoga both science and art form.
In 2002, pregnant with her first child, Christina trained as a prenatal yoga teacher with Francoise Freedman – doula, medical anthropologist, yoga teacher, perinatal yoga educator and founder of Birthlight in the UK. She later completed post natal yoga training with her too.
In 2004, she formalised her training as a kids’ yoga teacher with Shakta Kaur Khalsa who founded Sunlight Yoga. In the same year, she underwent teacher training with Aadil B. Palkhivala whose methodology included Iyengar-style asana and pranayama. She then went on to complete Yin Yoga teacher training with Sarah Powers, wherein she furthered her understanding of Eastern philosophy, learning about Buddhist mindfulness teachings and the importance of stillness in asana.
In 2005, Christina moved to Sydney and here met Rick Birrell, one of Avalon’s senior Hatha yoga teachers, whose care and instruction she has been receiving since then. As well as a master of form and sequencing, Rick has taught her the gifts of humility, creativity, daily practice and dedication.
Finally, it was her three beautiful children – Zak, Mia and Ellie – who, for a while, took her away from the yoga mat into the yogic journey of motherhood and showed her how much more she needed to learn. From them, she is learning the arts of listening, presence, truthfulness and simplicity.
It is to all these teachers, her children, students and dawn practice that Christina gives thanks.
