Christina Pateras
Hatha yoga
Kids yoga
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, having already been practising yoga since 1988 and teaching it to primary school children in London since 1996. In 2000, she started teaching Hatha Yoga at London’s Triyoga studio, quickly establishing her popular kids’ and teens’ classes there too.
Christina draws upon a wealth of yogic inspiration and experience with several leading yoga teachers, primarily her partner in life and work, Tony Susnjara, who created a unique system of Hatha Yoga called fluidFORM yoga. By 2004, they were teaching fluidFORM Hatha Yoga courses all over London to hundreds of people who had never done yoga before as well as running a small yoga studio where they taught privately. She is currently teaching some of these courses at Breathing Space.
Between 2000 and 2004, she studied with Christian Pisano, senior Iyengar teacher and head of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Nice, France. With him, she deepened her knowledge of ‘internal vinyasa’ – the underlying pattern connecting all postures, and the poetry that make yoga both science and art form.
In 2002, pregnant with their 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 also.
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, and completed Yin Yoga teacher training with Sarah Powers, furthering her understanding of Eastern philosophy and inspiring her with Buddhist mindfulness teachings and the importance of nurturing the Feminine.
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 for the last 4 years. 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 know. From them, she is learning the art of listening, truthfulness and simplicity – all bedrocks of her practice and teaching now.
It is to all these teachers, her students and her dawn practice that Christina gives thanks to daily.
