#45 – Non Hollywood-style, Glamorous Instagram yoga- Yoga in Vanuatu with Nicola Barnes

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #45 – Non Hollywood-style, Glamorous Instagram yoga – Yoga in Vanuatu with Nicola Barnes

Welcome to Episode #45 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Nicky Barnes onto the show. She is a yoga teacher from Vanuatu and she’s also the co-founder of the leading Yoga Association in Vanuatu. It’s donation based and, it has been for 13 years.

My conversation with Nicola Barnes, a yoga teacher from Vanuatu was so delightful as we took a deep dive into the world of her yoga association in Vanuatu. And we also discussed how yoga is an art and an act of coming home. I hope that this conversation made you curious about balance and movement and expression, as well as the act of coming home to yourself without pressure without ego, without ambition, just coming home.

Tell me more about Nicola Barnes

Nicola Barnes started yoga seriously while living in London in the late 1990s. She became a yoga teacher in India at Neyyar Dam Sivinanda Ashram in 2003. Since then, she has taught in the Cayman Islands and in Vanuatu. She is the co-founder of the leading Yoga Association in Vanuatu, which is entirely donation-based and has been for 13 years. All of the yoga teachers in the Vanuatu yoga association volunteer their time. She teaches a mixed Hatha style, which is mostly asana based, but does involve pranayama. She has been teaching yoga for 19 years.  

The Vanuatu Yoga Association was set up so that yoga in Port Vila would have a sense of community and longevity.  It also gives a forum for those who love to share their passion for yoga with others to instruct classes.  The Vanuatu Yoga Association aims to support the local community by offering classes that are welcoming and affordable. 

What to expect in the Yoga In Vanuatu episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast

Nicola Barnes and I shared a beautiful conversation that opened with how yoga first came into her life. While she was living in London, she found a yoga studio above a public swimming pool that she connected with and when she was living in Botswana, a co-worker took her to an Indian woman’s home to practice yoga. It sounded like such an organic way of practicing there— of moving the furniture around and coming to practice (and learn) yoga whenever suited you best. No time table. No schedule. As Nicky has traveled, she’s had unique experiences prating yoga and expressed how yoga is “a practice that helps us to connect with other people and in a way that’s really grounding and meaningful and very open.” And I couldn’t agree more— yoga is a tie that unites me to others on my travels as well. Even if there is language barriers, yoga can still be shared. I’ve even taught yoga before to a person who spoke no English whatsoever!

We then dove into how Nicky, along with two other co-founders, dreamed up the Vanuatu yoga association and decided to make it a nonprofit, volunteer based organization. Nicky expressed that, “It’s just been amazing that trusting in the goodness of people and trusting that something that doesn’t seem to be commercially logical can work.”

Nicola also expressed how beautiful it is to teach yoga to the local Ni-Vanuatu community as the borders of Vanuatu have been completely closed for 2 years— and as of Spring 2022 they are still closed. The local community has absolutely no conception of what yoga is, so she finds it very sweet when people come in asking if they need special gym shoes to do yoga. That being said, she feels like the roots of yoga are very naturally aligned with the culture of Vanuatu— of peacefulness, community, and harmony.

I also loved how Nicky highlighted how yoga exists in the real world— it’s not a cartoon or a Hollywood creation. It exists in the raw, unexpected, natural way of life and of living. She pointed out how Instagram yoga with perfect hair, lovely beauty, and being picture-perfect isn’t how yoga should really be viewed or considered— it’s messy, raw, and includes all the hiccups and bumps in life! As Nicky says, “Vanuatu is very humbling. It brings you back to reality. If you’re trying to do the Hollywood-style, very glamorous Instagram, yoga, you might struggle a little.”

Connect with Nicola Barnes

https://web.facebook.com/PortVilaYoga/?_rdc=1&_rdr  

https://yoga.vu/

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Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #45 – Non Hollywood-style, Glamorous Instagram yoga – Yoga in Vanuatu with Nicola Barnes

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Namaste family. And welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. Today, I am so excited to welcome Nicola Barnes onto the podcast today. She’s a yoga teacher from Vanuatu and she’s also the co-founder of the leading yoga association in Vanuatu. It’s donation based and it has been for 13 years. And while Nicola has been a yoga teacher for 19 years, I’m so excited to learn more about the yoga association and how yoga came into her life, and all there is to know about Nicola Barnes. So thank you so much for being with me here today on the show. 

[00:00:42] Nicola Barnes: Thank you, Lily. It’s a pleasure. I’m really excited to be here.

[00:00:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you. So let’s get started talking about how you first heard about yoga. How did it come into your life and get on your radar? 

How yoga came into Nicola’s life

[00:00:54] Nicola Barnes: Okay. I think the most meaningful start to yoga was when I was living in London. So in the late 1990s, early 2000s, I lived in London and it was a kind of hectic life, which is, I think, for many people as in a very corporate job and I was very much a seeker. So I was looking into Buddhism. I was realizing that at that stage of my life, that was something that was missing.

[00:01:21] And I found a yoga class that was a very everyday sort of setting. It was actually in a room above a public swimming pool in the center of London. And I just connected with the classes and immediately became a very regular student and very inspired by the style of yoga. It was a teacher who had been taught the Sivananda style. And she was very strong and very practical and very grounded. And I just immediately took to yoga. So with that, there were some other things that perhaps were part of my introduction into the, the love of it. I remember as a child, my mom had books about yoga in probably the sixties and seventies.

[00:02:07] I used to be very intrigued at looking, but that was very without understanding. So there was a connection in London and at that stage, it kicked off a search for a different type of life. I was looking for something and yoga then became part of that, something. So I traveled to India and did my teacher’s training in India. And from that moment forward, I had a real connection with a few of the teachers. There were some very interesting conversations about life and meaning in life and those things that bring us such grounded-ness and joy. And from then on, I’ve taught as a part of my life. I’m a teacher. I’m very multifaceted. I don’t teach yoga as a full-time job. It’s a part of my life. That’s part of the whole, so it’s a petal in the flower.

[00:02:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. I also love to learn too Nicola that your mother had books on yoga. Was she practicing or was it more just like part of the library? 

Nicola’s mother had books on yoga

[00:03:04] Nicola Barnes: I think it was more probably the library because she has not really practiced at all. And I’ve tried to encourage her to do different bits and pieces. And then just thing, it’s my dad has connected a bit with me through yoga every now and again, but not my mom.

[00:03:18] No, I think it was part of the maybe hippie culture of the seventies. It was one of those books that was there along with the incense and the bits and pieces. But she doesn’t have a strong connection, but what I have loved about yoga is ever since I lived in London, I found just the most amazing opportunities through yoga around the world.

Nicola’s learning experience

[00:03:40] At the time when I was learning, I had a bit of a crazy work life. I worked a lot in Botswana. I was working in Africa and I had a connection with an African woman at my workplace. And she said to me, one day— bring a change of clothes. I’m going to take you to do something with me that no one else will come with me.

[00:03:58] And this was an African woman. We were of similar age and I trusted her and said, Sure, I’ll do whatever. And she took me to this lady’s house. We knocked on the door and it was an Indian yoga teacher. The way that yoga worked there was you arrived whenever you arrived. And whenever you arrived was fine, they took all the furniture out of the lounge.

[00:04:18] It was a fairly small house and they would put the furniture outside and you would do yoga. So you could arrive at three in the afternoon. You could arrive at five, there were no classes. And whoever you brought, we did yoga with you and she would teach and she would teach for an hour or an hour and a half.

[00:04:34] And it was just the most amazing, really interesting, pretty eclectic environment, a very well-studied teacher. And so I’ve had these cool experiences all around the world, which has been part of the joy of travel and of meeting different people and experiencing different types of yoga and seeing how yoga is part of people’s lives in different ways.

[00:04:58] I think a lot of people think that yoga teachers are of a very one cut mold, very Lululemon and perfect and no pimples. And my yoga life has been very eclectic and has ebbed and flowed. It has changed a lot during my life. And it’s been part of the joy that it’s something that comes with you no matter where you go.

[00:05:20] Lily Allen-Duenas: I couldn’t agree more. It is something that does ebb and flow even with the seasons, or it can also be with the weeks or the years. It’s a beautiful thing to allow it to have that fluidity to it, to not always need that rigidity and structure that, I think people can also picture the Ashtanga that is very, you know, structured style practice.

[00:05:46] But I wanted to also agree with you on a huge level about the gift that yoga gives to connection worldwide. A huge of course pillar of this podcast and of what I do is trying to connect with yoga teachers around the world. And it’s something that. I’ve also found in my travels or in my work or in my life. It’s such a gorgeous tool of connection. Like your story in Botswana that yoga teacher’s house, it just filled my heart with so much joy. That’s such a beautiful story. Did you practice with her for a long time? Or do you have another story like that you’d want to share? 

Connection with yoga

[00:06:23] Nicola Barnes: I was a little eclectic in Botswana, if I’m very honest, that was at the earliest stage of my connection with yoga. So I wasn’t as regular, but it was very unique in how welcoming and how open and how absolutely. Just a part of the experience of higgly piggly life. You turn up at someone’s house, she’s let’s get all the furniture out and do yoga. It was interesting. I have enjoyed yoga in many countries.

[00:06:48] I had a wonderful experience in Sri Lanka. I was going for a walk, and came to a temple up on the top of the hill. And met a really incredible yoga teacher who of course has no bio and doesn’t have a Facebook page and barely speaks English and had a most wonderful couple of sessions with him. And you’re right.

[00:07:07] It’s a practice that helps us to connect with other people and in a way that’s really grounding and meaningful and very open. So that’s really something I love everywhere. I traveled to pretty much, I have had some really lovely yoga experiences. And I think particularly outside of the Western environment where it’s very, class-based, very regulated, very structured.

[00:07:33] Sometimes you find these little gems of experience that are very authentic and very raw. They’re not as structured as we would expect in a city. I’ve had some very interesting classes in India turning up at places where, of course no one speaks English and they don’t expect a white person and can be very fun.

[00:07:55] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yes. It is always that delight and that surprise. I also wanted to ask you, Nicola, how did you get started with the Vanuatu Yoga Association? How did that come to fruition or come to be something you were a co-founder?

Getting started with Vanuatu Yoga Association 

[00:08:11] Nicola Barnes: That’s a great question.

[00:08:12] So I really have to give the credit for starting that to a lovely teacher and very dear friend of mine called Katie Hamilton King, a woman originally from New Zealand. So she came here a little while before me, her husband had worked in Vanuatu and she came with her family and kids and she is a yoga teacher of second generation, her mom’s also a teacher and she came to Vanuatu and she found the existing class that was going a French woman called Pascal, who had started a class here.

[00:08:43] I don’t think Pascal was qualified. I’m not sure. And she had started a social yoga group and Pascal was leaving the country. So Katie, then I continued with that and Katie is a really, as a qualified and very experienced teacher really brought together the first yoga tribe and the first community of students and established regular classes and started to rent facilities and things like that.

[00:09:12] And in Vanuatu it’s quite complex. The environment of setting up a business as a foreigner can be quite complicated. And so the yoga association was a joining between Katie and then I arrived and a wonderful woman called Jen and Jen was in Vanuatu doing legal work. She was assisting the government with legal advice.

[00:09:33] She’s a lawyer and it was Jen’s idea to say let’s make it. If it’s not for profit, then. It’s easier to establish an association and we can set up the infrastructure that way and it makes everything legal. And we dreamed up the idea of let’s just for the short term at the beginning. See if it works as a voluntary association.

[00:09:54] So we don’t have set fees. We do have recommended rates, but people can pay anything they wish to pay, or, and if they don’t have money, they don’t need to pay. And that’s just absolutely amazingly worked for such a long time. We’ve managed to pay our rent and we have paid all of our outgoings. We bought equipment for various studios.

[00:10:14] And it’s just been amazing that trusting in the goodness of people and trusting that something that doesn’t seem to be commercially logical can work. So it’s been great. 

[00:10:28] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s huge. That is so huge that you, Katie, and Jen, the three of you came together and dreamed up this idea together. Nicola, I’d love to ask also how many yoga studios are part of the yoga association. And does it cover the entire island or, I think there might be up to 80 islands in Vanuatu. So maybe you’re even on other ones besides Port Vila. Can you tell us more?

About Port Vila

[00:10:54] Nicola Barnes: Yeah, sure. We’re very focused on Port Vila actually, because that’s where we live and where we spend our time. So the association will help and support and assist. So for example, there’s a wonderful lady. Who’s teaching on one of the other islands called Santo and she often comes to Vila.

[00:11:10] So when she comes to Villa, we share her information and promote her weekends or whatever courses she’s doing. So we do help each other and hope to facilitate yoga in the country. But we ask ourselves to run just the one. And we a little bit, the orphans, we do move around a bit in terms of the actual physical space, Port Vila is a very small capital city, but real estate is very expensive.

[00:11:37] So that has caused us a few hiccups along the road that we’ve moved a bit from one location to another location and trying to find a forever home has been a little challenging. It’s a very touristy town too. So places with the view over the water, it’s a very pretty town, very expensive. So while the associations worked really well, it doesn’t necessarily afford us to resort style facilities in terms of an actual physical room.

[00:12:02] So we do move quite a bit. We’re a bit of a virtual yoga studio, but we have a wonderful new home, which is at a kiteboarding school, very close to the seas. So we can see the sea in the distance and we look over coconut palms and it’s really beautiful. So we’re very grateful to the kite boarding school for welcoming us.

[00:12:22] We hang out in a little loft, which suits us because our community has actually gotten a lot smaller during the COVID period in Vanuatu, we’ve had our borders closed, completely closed for nearly two and a half years. So the community has really become very small. And so a little studio overlooking the sea is just a blessing. 

[00:12:43] Lily Allen-Duenas: I love the idea of being in a little loft above a kite boarding school. That’s so sweet. Oh, I love it. When things come together and merge and have that fusion with nature or another type of way to move our bodies or to challenge ourselves. Cause kind of forwarding is extremely difficult.

[00:13:03] Nicola Barnes: One thing we love about the kiteboarding school is yes, like-minded people that are into outdoors and expression and movement and balance. And there are some facilities that are being set up there about balance and about skateboarding. And it is just, hopefully it’s going to be a partnership made in heaven. We’ve just started there, but we are very optimistic.

[00:13:25] Lily Allen-Duenas: I think that just sounds like a dream. And so have the borders opened yet?

Borders are not open due to COVID

[00:13:30] Nicola Barnes: Unfortunately, we’ve just had our first wave of COVID and I myself had COVID a week ago or just over a week ago. So we’re going through a bit of an COVID period that perhaps the rest of the world felt a year or two ago and that’s affecting us now. 

[00:13:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yikes. Yeah, it’s been a tough road, but i, and I’m happy you sound well, you recovered well from COVID yeah? 

[00:13:55] Nicola Barnes: Bounce back. Great. Really good. Almost like a light switch turned back on, after a couple of little bit tough days, but And that really well, which was good.

[00:14:05] Lily Allen-Duenas: Great. And so also I would love to talk to you about how the local community responded to the yoga of the association being founded or the offering of classes. Was there curiosity, how was the response, would you say? 

Community response to the yoga association

[00:14:20] Nicola Barnes: Generally very warm and welcoming. So the people in Vanuatu are called Ni Vanuatu and the community is very lovely, very peaceful. The mentality of the people here connect very well with the philosophy or ethos of yoga that people are very community minded. They’re very welcoming. They’re very respectful. People are very peaceful.

[00:14:44] They believe more harmony amongst people is more important than your own particular individualistic. So we live in this beautiful community that we have just felt very welcome. It’s been really interesting, introducing some, Ni Vanuatu to yoga classes. There’s some very interesting questions because in many parts of the world, everyone conceptually understands or has some idea of what yoga is. Whereas here, the questions often sneak in, perhaps in Messenger, as is yoga a form of exercise. Do you need to wear trainers, special trainers? There’s just no concept really, very much about what yoga is. So that’s been really interesting. 

[00:15:27] Lily Allen-Duenas: Absolutely. And so have you had a lot of people coming in for just one class and reacting with complete surprise oh, wow. I thought that was going to be a cardio class or there any stories like that. 

[00:15:39] Nicola Barnes: A little bit. Part of the interesting dynamics to Vanuatu is that it’s a very multilingual country. So we have three official languages which are French, English, and Pigeon language called Bislama and then there are over a hundred other languages.

[00:15:56] So it can be very interesting when someone walks in the door to know how to greet them or what to say and that throws in another dynamic. But yoga is very good because people follow it along. You don’t really need to understand the words terribly to get started. And then the rest comes after that.

[00:16:15] But yeah we have a very fun time here and it’s a very wonderful place to live and to practice. It’s very green. It’s a very natural environment. When people ask me to just describe Vanuatu, sometimes I say it’s like Costa Rica, But 30 years ago. So we’re very pristine. Most people in metal aren’t who don’t live with electricity. Many don’t live with running water. So we live with gardens and farming and palms. It’s very green. It’s very natural, which is wonderful. 

[00:16:50] Lily Allen-Duenas: Definitely a slice of paradise. Wow. To have that lack of yeah, electricity and hums and all of that noise. Nikki, I love how you mentioned that you feel that the community of Vanuatu, isn’t quite sure what yoga is. There’s not that kind of preconceived notion that a lot of people maybe in the West have that kind of cookie cutter idea already in their pocket. So I love to ask every yoga teacher that I interview, what is their personal definition of yoga. What does yoga mean to you? Or how do you define it? 

Definition of yoga

[00:17:29] Nicola Barnes: For me, yoga is a coming home. It’s very much a coming home to myself. So I think the world pulls us in many different directions. And for me, the quietness of when I step onto a mat, whether it’s for 10 minutes or whether it’s for an hour or no matter what I do, it’s immediately a reconnecting and it’s a reconnecting to my true self. So it’s very much about resetting, re-establishing. It’s about being true. And that truth changes as well. So yoga for me, I’m now 47. So as a 47 year old yoga is a different type of experience, but it’s no less than it’s no better. And it’s no more than it was when I was 23. To me, the main thing I think about when I think of trying to try and define yoga, it’s a coming home to myself. It’s stepping back into who I really am. It’s truthfulness.

[00:18:27] Lily Allen-Duenas: No. I love that. I love that. I also agree in that sense of coming back to self, how I love that yoga is such an internal experience. It has so very little to do with the external environment or the external circumstances. It’s about listening very deeply. To our mind, our body and our energy. I think that there’s so much to learn every time. I also do any of the yoga practices, whether it’s just, sitting still for five minutes and breathing, or, laying down for 10 minutes and butterfly, it doesn’t have to be a full practice of any size or shape… 

[00:19:08] Nicola Barnes: Yoga exists in the real world. I find some of the Instagram impressions of yoga are of silence and absolute picture book beauty. And to be honest for me, that’s not yoga necessarily. You could be completely disconnected and in the most beautiful environment. Yoga exists with bumps and warts and farts, and it exists in the real world.

[00:19:36] It doesn’t exist in this metaphoric or make-believe. And I guess that would be one of the misunderstandings of yoga that I think people bring in. Perhaps it’s a very Western attitude that we have. To be perfect, the perfect yoga pants and the perfect environment and the white studio, this idea of perfection and Vanuatu is a very natural world, which means it’s Higgly Piggly and things go wrong. Nothing’s perfect here. And yoga to me is like that too. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s not a cartoon. It’s not a Hollywood creation.

[00:20:14] It’s much more real and much more authentic. Which is definitely what you get in a yoga class in Vanuatu, Vanuatu it is very famous for expecting the unexpected. It’s a very raw world. And we have had some funny experiences. We had a yoga studio that had very big windows and we had people taking shortcuts through the studio, walking through the window, which was very funny thinking. It was perfectly fine to walk through the yoga studio by stepping through the window. We have existed above a dentist shop and heard people drilling out teeth while we were meditating. We’ve had all sorts of hilarious experiences. It’s definitely very real-world, it’s not a picture book.

[00:20:56] I don’t know quite how to describe that, but yeah. 

[00:20:59] Lily Allen-Duenas: No, I think you nailed it. I think the walking through the window in the middle of a yoga class, and then also the dentist drilling ground, those are very vivid examples, Nikki. I love it. 

[00:21:10] Nicola Barnes: We were in a basement of a gym and we had people dropping gear, like big, heavy weights and we’re in the middle of a meditation and there’s a ba-boom!

[00:21:19] So we definitely exist in that. Very messy real world, but I find that as one of the humorous parts of a yoga group and yoga teacher has a sense of humor, I feel. And Vanuatu is very humbling. It brings you back to reality. If you’re trying to do the Hollywood-style, very glamorous Instagram, yoga, you might struggle a little.

[00:21:41] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, I think that having a sense of humor is such a huge gift that you get from yoga as well. That lesson of not holding onto things. So tightly, not just the conception of perfection, but even the conception of oh, There’s not a meal or anything, or just in our own sense of, our ego, not gripping things so tightly or sense of control in the workplace. It’s just that softening that smile and that’s just okay. What is all right. 

[00:22:15] Nicola Barnes: Let’s see where this is going to go. 

[00:22:18] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. And so also Nikki wanted to make sure I asked. I wanted to learn a little bit more about the challenges of teaching on a small island that I know pre- COVID had such a transient nature of all the teachers. And I’m sure there’s, as you mentioned, challenges, to find the space on such a small island. So can you talk to us more about what that’s like? 

The challenges of teaching on a small island

[00:22:39] Nicola Barnes: The more transient nature of the teachers can be seen as a challenge, but it can also be a real gift. Definitely never lacked for interesting people that come through. They don’t always stay very long. Vanuatu can be a place where someone tries to set up a business and tries to come and work in an area, or there’s a lot of transient jobs.

[00:23:01] There’s a high percentage of NGO, so non-government organizations or aid work. Some people might come in on a contract for three months and we’ve met the most amazing and wonderful teachers and have so many people volunteer their time, which has been really lovely. On the flip side of that, I guess schedules change a lot and there’s a lot of coming and going of teachers.

[00:23:22] One of the challenges here is that I touched on it earlier that as a foreigner, setting up a business can be a bit complicated. It’s not impossible. So that has definitely, probably slowed down the commercialization of yoga. We do have a couple of commercial yoga studios, and we really welcome them because at the beginning, right up until very recently, the yoga association has been the only consistent source of yoga and Vanuatu we’ve had no other studios, but there is a studio that’s just started in town and there’s one in another island called Santo. And it’s wonderful to see the opportunities for yoga growing here. I think in terms of a location for retreats, because of the natural beauty, that’s something that we might see.

[00:24:07] But differently there is a little bit of a long process and setting up the business. So that has been a bit of a barrier, but given our nonprofit approach, it’s not actually been an issue for us, but it would be challenging to set up a commercial yoga studio. The other thing too is we’re a very small population.

[00:24:25] So in any place in the world, only a percentage of people of the general population will become regular yoga students. So with the population being so small our country is less than 300,000 people in total, across 80 islands. So even on this island, the capital, there’s less than 40,000 people. So we have a very small pool of clients or yogis. So that probably naturally keeps things pretty small and quiet.

[00:24:57] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s good to hear more about how it’s challenging, but it’s also rewarding. And I love to hear that there are two more studios popping up and that as you mentioned, I guess some have come and gone. But maybe they’re here to stay, hopefully.

[00:25:13] Nicola Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. The people that stay here the longest and where it usually works well for someone that’s new, that’s overseas born that wants to make a life here as if you’re very multifaceted. So you might not teach yoga 16 classes a week.

[00:25:28] You might teach yoga and on the side, be a gym instructor and then in the daytime have a job at the bank. It means we attract really interesting people that have multiple skills and it means we can live a life where we don’t just do one thing, which I think is a blessing as well. 

[00:25:43] Lily Allen-Duenas: What is your other job, Nikki? 

Nichola has a couple of different jobs

[00:25:44] Nicola Barnes: I have a couple at the moment I worked for the chamber of commerce. So I manage a number of different projects. I have a woman in business project and I have a BlockChain project that’s about distribution of money to people in need after natural disasters. And I manage a kind of a skill center where we upskill adults that are in the business community.

[00:26:09] So that’s one of my hats. I also have a small retail store and love working with natural artisanal products. So I love weaving. We have beautiful weaving in Vanuatu and really lovely skills and providing an environment where people can commercialize some of those skills. My husband and I have built a marina.

[00:26:31] So we manage our marina, which is a, the point marina. It’s a place where we welcome people to live, fight next to the sea. If you’re into water sports, and I also have a marketing business, perhaps I have too many hats, but it makes for a very interesting variety.

[00:26:49] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, but it’s and it’s not quite as complimentary as other people say of hats.

[00:26:54] Like I’m a photographer, a videographer and a graphic designer. I’m like, okay, they’re all in the same, like little realm, but you’re like marketing and Blockchain and local artisanal goods. 

[00:27:04] Nicola Barnes: I come from a family of that. So my mom and my sister and my granddad are artists.

[00:27:09] So that’s where the local products and working with weavers and textiles and that sort of thing comes from my background was technology. So I used to work in telecommunications and had a really busy career sitting out on my mobile phone. Yeah. And rebranding and things like that. So that’s where the BlockChain stuff comes from.

[00:27:29] And I love business. I think business provides a lot of opportunities for people, a lot of pride, a lot of learning and I love my work with the chamber of commerce. So yeah, I do lots of different things, which is really lovely and perhaps why I need the yoga so much so that I have a roost. I come home to myself on the mat.

[00:27:50] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. And yeah, the telecommunications sitting at a desk doing mobile phone lines. Yeah. That’s a hustle, isn’t it? 

[00:28:01] Nicola Barnes: Yeah, it has been, it’s afforded me a really interesting life because I traveled a lot for work, but it’s a very different world phones as such a given now. Anyway, we’re getting sideways there, but yeah, a little bit.

[00:28:16] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. So I would also like to know where do you envision your Association going in the future? Do you have a goal set up or a dream with Katie and Jen, or is it just exactly as it is perfect. And you’re content with this kind of fluidity and change. 

Yoga association in the future

[00:28:32] Nicola Barnes: It’s an interesting question. I think we’re very open to change. We are very relaxed, so we don’t have stiff goals. There are no rules. We’ve always managed a very fluid, loose arrangement that has gone with the flow, and has changed as things change. And as we see studios starting up, the nonprofit angle can be a competitive barrier, perhaps. So if you were a very motivated young, new person wanting to establish a studio, to have teachers who are very established, offering the classes for close to free, it makes the business model of a commercial studio more difficult. So we feel there may be a time when the association will sit back and become a more community website or leave the market more open to people who want to earn a living from yoga, which is happy and sad at the same time. I think it’s a natural evolution. As yoga grows around the world, yoga teachers need to also make a living, so if your skillset was very strong in yoga and you wanted that to be your entire life and your world and your business, then if we found people like that, that were very committed, I think we would step back a little bit.

[00:29:56] So it’s an interesting question and that may be seen differently by different people, but we’re very relaxed with that. We feel it’s just how things change over time. 

[00:30:05] Lily Allen-Duenas (2): Beautiful. Do you have any advice you would like to offer to someone who wanted to start out their yoga journey or studio ownership, anything like that? 

Advice on starting the yoga journey 

[00:30:13] Nicola Barnes: Not so much advice apart from perhaps the importance of not putting too much pressure on yourself. So I see a lot of people that are desperate to get into a complicated pose or as I have matured in my practice and in my life, I see the grace in life, while it’s great to have ambition. I see a lot of people hurting themselves with their ambition and their ego. And perhaps these are some of the basics of yoga, but the older I get, the more I come back to some of the fundamentals and learning to accept yourself and your body and your practice as part of who you are and not needing to achieve a specific pose or a specific outcome and not being too hard on ourselves.

[00:31:04] I think as societies evolve, we become quite have very high expectations of ourselves. And I think there is a real grace in one of the lessons I’ve learned recently is that practice evolves with your life. When I had COVID, my practice was breathing and when I had COVID my practice was not responding to let things pass.

[00:31:27] So yoga can come with us on that journey. And I hope that I’d like to encourage people to let it be a natural evolution and not push too hard. That’s something that I think about and try to encourage my students. 

[00:31:44] Lily Allen-Duenas: I think it’s important for our listeners to hear and to remember that it isn’t about that ego or that ambitious pose goal.

[00:31:53] It can be very, it can be very humbling experience to try to learn a new pose, or get there if we can have that perspective of humility and of allowing, but it can be hard too when students say how many weeks, how many days until I can do XYZ. It’s sad because it isn’t about getting into a shape that doesn’t make your yoga practice better.

[00:32:18] Nicola Barnes: And that’s so hard to teach. Isn’t it like today? I had a practice today with a few fellow yogis outside, and I did a Cow Face pose, which after 20 years of yoga, I am so bad at Cow Face pose. It is hilarious. And I think that’s part of being okay with not being perfect and yoga teachers, perhaps, I think we can all learn to come to the mat with what we have and that’s okay. 

[00:32:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: It is, it definitely is enough. And I’m grateful that you brought that up. So thank you, Nikki, for sharing it. And if our listeners do want to get to know you better, is there a good link or a good place for them to find you? I’ll put everything in the show notes, but I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to say to our listeners how they can best find.

Finding Nicola online

[00:33:03] Nicola Barnes: We are better at responding on Facebook. So we are not super technical. We exist in a world that’s face-to-face and what of mouth is how we do a lot of our promotion and so on, but we are reasonably good at Facebook. So if anyone’s coming to Vanuatu, please contact us on Facebook. We’ll happily share where we’re teaching and we welcome any visitors and visiting teachers are very welcome too, we’d love to see you as soon as the borders open up, which hopefully should be in July this year. We would love to see anyone that wants to come and practice or share their gift of yoga with us. We would love that. 

[00:33:42] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. So thank you so much, Nikki, for being with me on the show today, it’s been a joy to be with you. 

[00:33:48] Nicola Barnes: And thank you, it’s been a real pleasure. 

[00:33:52] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. My conversation with Nicola Barnes, a yoga teacher from Vanuatu was so delightful as we took a deep dive into the world of yoga association formation in Vanuatu. And also we discussed how yoga is an art and an act of coming home. I hope that this conversation made you curious about balance and movement and expression, as well as the act of coming home to yourself without pressure, without ego, without ambition, just coming home. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. Be well.

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