Gold Coast Yoga Centre

🌟 Friday 14th August 2026 - 10am to 12.30pm - Full Vinyasa Primary Led Class with Mark Togni

Experience the power of a full Vinyasa Primary Led class, where coming to full standing after each Vinyasa creates a strong practice which is both purifying and transformative. The extra heat created from the additional movement is deeply cleansing and moves stagnant energy through the body, breaking down physical boundaries and providing the opportunity for growth 🔥

Please note - this class will replace the Mysore class, some yoga experience is required but if you’re unsure then feel free to check in with Mark or call the office 🙏

Tickets $35 + BF from Event Brite - link below and in bio…

https://fullvinyasaprimaryled2026.eventbrite.com

🩵 More musings, winter products and tips, our upcoming events schedule and more…

Check out the link to our latest newsletter below/in our bio now!

https://mailchi.mp/goldcoastyogacentre/yoga-for-liberation-july-2026-newsletter

FRIDAYS…

I love how this pic captures the flavours of Fridays at the GCYC…
The bliss and spaciousness of 6am Yoga and Pranayama with Phyo
Challenging limits, building and progressing your practice at 10am Mysore with Mark
Restore and reset - come back to yourself 4pm Restorative with Katherine Anne

Yoga takes many forms..
all lead you back to your true Self..

🪷🙏🪷

(Pic Friday morning teacher practice)

We are mid Naidoc Week, and I was interested to read about the practice of Dadirri shared by Red Nose Community ACT written by Noel Davies…

“Aboriginal people practice deep listening, an almost spiritual skill, based on respect. ‘Dadirri’ is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘inner deep listening and quiet still awareness and waiting’. Originating from the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languages of the Daly River region in the NT, it is a way of life that focuses on being fully present, reflecting, and connecting with yourself, others, and the land.

Experiencing Dadirri - Clear a little space as often as you can, to simply sit and look at and listen to the earth and environment that surrounds you. Focus on something specific, such as a bird, a blade of grass, a clump of soil, cracked earth, a flower, bush or leaf, a cloud in the sky or a body of water (sea, river, lake…) whatever you can see. Or just let something find you be it a leaf, the sound of a bird, the feel of the breeze, the light on a tree trunk. No need to try. Just wait a while and let something find you, let it spend time with you. Lie on the earth, the grass, some place. Get to know that little place and let it get to know you- your warmth, feel your pulse, hear your heart beat, know your breathing, your spirit. Just relax and be there, enjoying the time together. Simply be aware of your focus, allowing yourself to be still and silent, to listen…
Following this quiet time there may be, on occasion, value in giving expression in some way to the experience of this quiet, still listening. You may wish to talk about the experience or journal, write poetry, draw, paint or sing… This needs to be held in balance - the key to Dadirri is in simply being, rather than in outcomes and activity. In greeting each morning, remind yourself of dadirri by blessing yourself with the following… “Let tiny drops of stillness fall gently through my day” - Noel Davies

It feels so familiar to the practices of Yoga… Direct insight from the earth/Nature itself. This Naidoc week, consider how we can all become allies to our First Nations people. The original custodians of this land, and holders of ancient wisdom.

📸 Paralpi by Zaachariaha Fielding

It’s worth following Iyengar Yoga UK as they celebrate this amazing book 🙌📕🙌

And it feels a little auspicious we finally have it back in our little shop 📿❤️🌟

60 Years of Light on Yoga

Published internationally in 1966, Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar has guided generations of practitioners around the world.

Often described as the “bible of yoga”, Light on Yoga brought clarity, precision and depth to the practice of asana, making yoga accessible around the world, while preserving its profound tradition.

To mark this milestone, IY(UK) is launching a special series celebrating the enduring legacy of this remarkable book.

Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing conversations with senior Iyengar Yoga teachers, personal stories, historical insights, and reflections on how Light on Yoga continues to shape practice today.

Whether you’ve studied the book for decades or are opening it for the very first time, we hope this series will inspire you to return to its pages with fresh eyes.

As B.K.S. Iyengar wrote:
“Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim.”

Here’s to sixty years of Light on Yoga and to the generations of practitioners it continues to inspire.

📖 Have you got a copy of Light on Yoga? We’d love for you to share a picture of your copy of Light on Yoga and hear when you first encountered it or what it has meant to your own practice. Share your memories in the comments below.

IyengarYogaUK

☕️ Some of the reasons we love Fortune Delight Concentrated Herbal tea/drink include:

🔸Hydration support
🔸Alkalising effect
🔸Subtle enjoyable flavour, as a tea or in your water bottle, that you can drink all day
🔸Grown biodynamically and harvested to maintain potency and increase Prana.

At times, Fortune Delight seems to work like magic 🪄

Suzanne swears it helps to chase away the first hints of a sore throat, when feeling overfull or unable to digest, or just when feeling a bit stagnant and in need of something cleansing 🫖

🪴 Made using a special freeze-dried technology that captures the nutrition and vitality of the herbs (Camellia, Chrysanthemum & Jasmine), it’s cleansing, hydrating and energising.

1 sachet makes 2 cups of delicious herbal tea (hot or cold), feels incredibly healing and nourishing and satisfying as an alternative to sugary, milky or caffeinated drinks.

If you are looking for an alternative to your coffee or tea cravings, we recently restocked both the lemon and raspberry flavours. You can try a single sachet, but we recommend stocking up! 🌸

(we really love it)

🪷 We are looking forward to holding another evening of community kirtan and welcoming back the amazing Madhuvani and Mantra Australia accompanying musicians, on Saturday 1st August…

🙏 We first experienced her uplifting sacred mantra back in March, and it will be so wonderful to feel the joy and devotion of chanting with the group and our GCYV community again in a few weeks time. All are welcome!

🌟 Saturday 1st August:
- Doors open from 4.30pm for chai
- Sacred Mantra from 5pm to 7pm

Tickets are $25 + booking fee via Event Brite – link in bio and below ✨

https://community-kirtan-gcyc-august-2026.eventbrite.com

🌸🙌🌸

One of the best explanations of renunciation I’ve heard came from Richard Gere of all people.
He basically said renunciation is not giving away your material possession, giving away the house, or the car, or your friends or family...
It is understanding that none of these things is the cause of your true happiness.

Enjoy the house, the car (without excess) but don’t be under any illusion that your happiness, or internal state of being comes from anything outside of yourself.

I am probably paraphrasing as I read it a long time ago, and I may have slightly re-worded, but the message really stayed with me.
I had read it in texts, I had heard it in talks... but I needed someone more earthbound to explain it to me in a very simple way before it started to connect.

Another teaching on this matter comes from St Francis of Assisi who taught that “true happiness does not come from something outside of yourself. It does not come from having followers or large churches. True happiness is when you have nothing, you are starving, it is cold, dark and raining, and you knock on a stranger’s door but they slam it in your face - yet you are still happy.

Happiness is an internal state, completely unreliant on the external environment and only we can influence our internal state, by what we choose to focus on, how we choose to live, what we put in to our bodies and minds, how we spend our hours, how we respond/react to events/people around us.

There are of course external distractions and obstacles, as well as helpful practices and paths, but ultimately it is an internal awakening.

Our suffering comes from trying to hang on to what we have, to our desires/wants for more, to run from our fears - our suffering comes from our struggle with the external reality - with life - especially when it doesn't look/feel like we want it to.
This is perhaps part of what Buddha meant when he taught "Life is suffering".

From the Yoga Sutras commentary by Sw Prabhavananda I learned a helpful method of beginning to calm the mind. First turn away from the distractions/calm the disturbing thoughts and emotions, then focus on the helpful practices and calm emotions. This may not take you to Happiness, but it may help create the conditions in which it can bloom.

Yoga asana, Meditation, cultivating the Brahmaviharas, chanting, wholesome eating and living, time in Nature, being present, Svadhyaya, Tapas, Pranayama and Pratyahara ( and all the Eight Limbs) are some more of of the helpful methods in our tradition. There are many. Everyone can find something that they connect with that can help them get back to their truest way of being.

Please note: these are my pers

In a day and age where we get succinct information bites on social media, how do we go deeper when wanting to explore Yoga Philosophy? 📚

One way is to spend time with, or receive guidance from, someone who has imbibed and embodied wisdom for a long time... Another is simply to go back to the long form of books and spend time digesting and attempting to live the wisdom...

It has been a little dream of mine to reintroduce books to the GCYC... but even finding suppliers has been trickier. But we’ve managed to curate a small selection of books that have been meaningful to us, and we are delighted to bring books back to our little shop!

These include gems like Light on Yoga, the must have insights of B.K.S Iyengar on asana, Mark’s favourite Ashtanga book by Lino Miele, the Yoga Sutras commentary by Swami Prabhavananda, translated by Christopher Isherwood, an often overlooked commentary as it seems too simple in parts, yet has continued to feed and awaken my understanding for over 30 years, and is translated by someone who lived and breathed the teachings alongside the master, a beautiful poetry book that captures the heart of the Dharma and more...

The first of the Yoga Sutras tells us “atha Yoga anushasanam” “NOW is the exploration of Yoga”. Two words are important in this - Atha/NOW - meaning in the present - being fully present and putting all else aside is the place of experiencing Yoga; and anushasanam which has many translations in English as we don’t have quite the right word - experience, discovery, exploration - imagining digging for ancient artifacts, having to go down layer by layer, deeper and deeper, delicately, with focus, precision and concentration and eventually discovering the treasure - which we then have to fully reveal in stages as well... This hits closer to home for the translation - the difference with the treasure of wisdom, we then begin a process of living and embodying it, which is also included in the full meaning...

We hope you love our little selection, we aim to continue and add more as we can...

Yours in the study of Yoga 🙏
💛 Suzanne