Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #15 – Yoga is a Fairy Godmother – Yoga in Botswana with Bonolo Phaladze

Welcome to Episode #15 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Bonolo Phaladze onto the show. She is a yoga studio owner and yoga teacher from Botswana. The way that Bonolo describes yoga, as a fairy godmother was such a surprise! But a delight to hear and to listen to her share her thoughts on yoga in Botswana and how yoga makes her feel.

As a yoga studio owner of one of the few yoga studios in Botswana, Bonolo describes what it was like for her to find yoga herself, and her journey to find a yoga teacher— it was harder than she expected! 

Get ready for a fun conversation filled with laughter and creative analogies and metaphors! Yoga in Botswana, here we come!

Tell me more about Bonolo Phaladze

Bonolo Phaladze is the founder and lead teacher at Yownn Yoga, a yoga studio based in Gaborone, Botswana. The studio offers yoga retreats in Southern Africa, and yoga classes both in person and online.

Bonolo’s first encounter with yoga was not enthusiastic, it was a doctor’s recommendation. In 2013 due to a high risk pregnancy she had no choice but to accede to her doctor’s demands to abandon her regular high intensity train for something low impact and gentle like yoga. She was skeptical of yoga, maybe even judgmental, she had never once considered yoga a fitness activity.The first yoga session sparked a curiosity and  respect in her that propelled her to keep returning to the mat. She flirted with the practice on and off for years, marveling at its  calming and grounding nature. As a Financial Markets professional, the practice of yoga provided a sanctuary from the high pressure, high paced and highly competitive banking environment. Her time on the mat gave her the opportunity to relieve stress and clear her mind, the perfect balance that most professionals can only dream of.

She would in 2017 discover a local yoga teacher who was affordable and could give her private classes and a 40-day yoga program that would transform her life so much she decided to teach. She did her YTT200 in 2019 in Thailand at One Yoga Thailand. Bonolo is a Registered Yoga Teacher, RYT200 with Yoga Alliance, she specializes in yoga for beginners primarily because the yoga scene in Botswana is relatively new, and there is a lot of work to be done to introduce more people to yoga

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

Bonolo kicks off the conversation by revealing how she first came to yoga, as her bio indicates, it wasn’t enthusiastically. She first saw people at the gym just lying around on their yoga mats (apparently!) and she judged yoga as something too boring and easy. 

Now, it is her passion to teach new students what yoga is and what yoga can be. As yoga in Botswana is still not mainstream, the majority of her students are new to the practice. She loves walking alongside her students on their journey of yoga and showing them that it is more than just handstands and headstands. The emotional and mental presence involved in yoga is where the magic lies. 

While yoga in Botswana may be relatively “unpopular” as it’s not mainstream yet, Bonolo describes Botswana as an oasis for those seeking peace, and as she jokes “a place to sleep.”

Curious about yoga in Botswana? Let’s go straight to the source! Tap into our conversation wherever you listen to podcasts.

For the skimmers – What’s in the Yoga in Botswana episode?

• Yoga is a Fairy Godmother 
• The Joy of Yoga – A Sun Burst! 
• Teaching Beginners & Walking with Them On Their Journey
• Yoga For The Four Pillars of Stress, Anxiety, Insomnia, and Back Pain

Favorite Quote From Bonolo Phaladze

“I feel like yoga is a fairy godmother— it is charming, whimsical, loving, supportive— but it also let’s you explore but you still feel supported. You can venture out but it will hold you, support you, love you, and show you little corners you didn’t know existed. Yoga is a fairy godmother.”

Connect with Bonolo Phaladze

https://yownnyoga.com/retreats-workshops/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCilnPwG29SD7RIfIQ_YgamQ

https://www.instagram.com/yownnyoga/

https://www.facebook.com/yownnyoga/

Want more?

https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/

Everything you need is just one click away! Check out all the resources here: https://linktr.ee/wildyogatribe

 

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #15 – Yoga is a Fairy Godmother – Yoga in Botswana with Bonolo Phaladze

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. I’m your host, Lily Allen Duenas. We’ll talk about the world of yoga and we’ll talk to people from around the world. Join us for authentic conversations about the global yoga ecosystem and we’ll cover yoga philosophies and methodologies along the way in. Exhale. We’re about to dive in.

[00:00:38] Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast today, I am so excited to welcome onto the show, Bonolo phaladze. She is from Botswana. She’s a yoga teacher and a yoga studio owner, and she owns Yoni yoga. It’s a yoga studio based in [00:01:00] Gaborone Botswana, and the studio offers yoga retreats in Southern Africa.

[00:01:05] And yoga classes, both in-person and online, have a great YouTube presence. Definitely recommend checking out their free classes on YouTube as well. So Bonilla’s first encounter with yoga. Wasn’t really enthusiastic actually. And it’s a story that I’d love for her to tell herself. So thank you so much, Bonilla for joining me on the show today.

Tell me a little about yourself and your story with yoga

[00:01:28] Bonolo Phaladze: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, Lily, for having me, I’m truly grateful for the opportunity and my. My first introduction to yoga, like you mentioned, was very, it wasn’t very enthusiastic. I had seen people go into the gym that I went to. I was very hyper active. It was very intense. I did all sorts of high intensity exercises at the gym, and I kind of didn’t understand what you were doing.

[00:01:57] I would see. Beautiful [00:02:00] lean women in colorful yoga clothes. Huguenots coming into the city are very chilled out, very Zen and that kind of judged them. I wonder, what’s that about how you come all the way to the gym to just lay down on you? The men, because they imagined that yoga was about, I don’t, I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I would often sometimes see them lying on the mat.

[00:02:22] So I thought about it now and then. In 2013, I was pregnant and I headed, um, I had a high-risk pregnancy, so my adapter has stopped me from all high intensity exercise and he actually needs a sheet. She suggested that I do yoga walking. Or swimming or all three of them. I walked. I did send me, but then I wasn’t getting, I was used to high energy.

[00:02:56] So I was like, let me just get this thing to go. You never [00:03:00] knew. So I went to my first yoga class. I was about seven months pregnant, 30 weeks or thereabouts or 29 weeks. I’m not sure when I can first do the class. It was interesting. It was really interesting in that it was like three longest one hour of my training life on the one hand, but it was also sort of exhilarating on the other hand.

[00:03:27] And, um, it really sparked an interest in. And I, and as well, I realized that it was, I was really saw, I realized that it really worked out in a way that I hadn’t anticipated UGA would, would, would, would do or would offer. So it’s really dead. Uh, it intrigued me to see that. 

[00:03:53] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. Uh, I think that that’s how so many people kind of get that first introduction to yoga is at the gym when they see [00:04:00] other people showing up with their mats, as you said, and then they look in the room and they see.

[00:04:05] Sitting on the ground, touching their toes, sitting on the ground, moving around and, and I could see how it’s, uh, it’s not what it appears. And a lot of the yoga students I have, who’ve never tried it before. And it’s their first class afterwards. They’ll say, wow, that’s so much harder than it looks. I think that carries true.

[00:04:25] Bonolo Phaladze: Exactly. Well now for me as a yoga teacher, I often when people say to me that it doesn’t even look like an exercise, I always encourage them to come to class, just, you know, to experience that. And I am always 11, when they come out of that session and be like, yo, that was intense because I think people walk into yoga class expecting to just maybe chill out.

[00:04:52] And then they realized that it really does require a lot of physical presence or physical [00:05:00] activity. And more than just the physical element, it also requires a lot of presents. It requires a lot of availability or emotional availability. And it’s that in itself can actually be more intense than the physical practice itself.

[00:05:15] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s such a great point that it does invite and call for this presence. And I also think it calls for us to be comfortable. Uncomfortable, you know, you have to just breathe into those positions where you feel something like you’re touching your edge and it’s kind of that owl. Ooh. You know, sensation, you just have to stay there for five breaths, eight breaths, whatever the count is.

[00:05:40] And I think that’s a huge challenge, a mental challenge as well for our students. 

[00:05:45] Bonolo Phaladze: It is, it is a big mental challenge. A lot of people actually say that yoga is painful, but I often always get the sense that the pain isn’t necessarily new from a physical standpoint, it’s more [00:06:00] from an emotional standpoint.

[00:06:01] And like you say, the beauty of all your guys when you initially anti-poaching. Sometimes there is that discomfort. And I love that. If you stick with it as comfort, you would realize you would imagine out of that pose, um, having, having experienced that discomfort and the new body opening up and then get into the joy of the pose itself.

[00:06:26] So I think in a, we it’s, it’s a bit like. If you come across huddles, if you leave before actually immense in yourself, in your huddles, um, acknowledging them, you won’t ever get to experience the joy that comes from. 

[00:06:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: It is a gateway to joy. Um, and as you practice and as you continue, there’s more and more joy in it.

[00:06:51] I think that that’s kind, it can be a barrier for beginners as well, just thinking, oh, is it always, I’m not flexible. I am always flexible. And [00:07:00] then people get in such a hurry too. They’re like how many classes or how many days until I can do a handstand, you know, there’s that urgency too. 

[00:07:09] Bonolo Phaladze: I think we, uh, we live in a society that, um, we love the instant gratification we want here now.

[00:07:19] So, and again, I think, um, gym yoga also kind of sets the tone for. Um, the more athletic type of yoga, you know, where people kind of expect that it will be high-intense, it’ll be extremely fast. You’d eventually get to a headstand if you do whatever. But, um, for me, I actually also did go through that phase in my life where I was like cheese poses chasing get into the next level, but I’ve since, um, you know, taken a step back to.

[00:07:52] Jenky moves along. Um, stay with the discomfort, immense messed up in the Janie [00:08:00] because the beauty of yoga really isn’t the journey. 

Can you paint us a little picture of Yoga in Botswana?

[00:08:02] Lily Allen-Duenas: So I’d love to ask you Bonilla about yoga and Botswana. Um, is it usually kind of most common in gyms or is there a lot of yoga studios where a ton of young people going older people going, can you paint us a little bit of a picture?

[00:08:18] Bonolo Phaladze: So you’ll get envelopes that really are not as mainstream as they are in the west or in South Africa. I think South Africa is coming up quite nicely. What’s more is that it is more at the beginning of starting to have a yoga community. So a lot of the yoga participants go to diamond gyms. And even then it’s not as available as one would like to see.

[00:08:45] For example, I struggled. So as I said, I started yoga in 2013, but in between the time I went for yoga teacher training and the time that I really struggled to fight. A yoga class that I could consistently go [00:09:00] to, especially during the week. So I did mostly Saturday morning yoga class midweek. I would then go on YouTube and practice on YouTube.

[00:09:09] Um, but to answer your question. We are seeing a lot of, uh, small studios coming up or small or solo teachers to be precise because we’re not seeing a lot of studios. We have quite a handful of studios, but we’re seeing a lot of more solo yoga teachers coming up. And it’s nice to see because we’re seeing.

[00:09:31] People getting interested in yoga so they can only be really bait. I would hope that at some point in the near future, you would be more intentional and deliberate about building a yoga community. 

Could you describe a little bit about your country?

[00:09:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Wonderful. So they’re definitely very lucky to have their own yoga then. And so vanilla too, for just like a minute here.

[00:09:54] Can we pretend that somebody or one of our listeners has never heard of [00:10:00] Botswana or just doesn’t know very much. Could you describe a little bit about your country ?

[00:10:07] Bonolo Phaladze: That’s one of my favorite topics, because I think a lot of people. So when I travel, I love to travel and I did my teacher training in Thailand, for example, and I realized that a lot of people really do not know what I’m at as a country, or don’t even know what’s on a, at all. I realized that, and I, I read a thought, I bought it.

[00:10:29] I’m not in one, the book, could it be? And I realized that, uh, essentially part of Africa within sarcoma, right? Well, for the most part, I would see. So unlike in African countries where you’re always hearing about really negative stories, what’s gonna hardly make it in the news because of sports. Um, so was that.

[00:10:53] Um, is in South Africa, one next to South Africa. [00:11:00] We have a population of about 2.3 million. We have free education from pre-primary school up to university. We have free healthcare. We quite initially have, um, a thriving economy. We have, um, We were really lagged in terms of tourism, especially in luxury tourism.

[00:11:27] We have the, uh, the majority of our tourism sector is based in the north part of the country where we have the most pristine. Places or some of them were presented places in the world. People come to see enough for luxury tourism. They come for peace and tranquility. We have beautiful blue skies. We have beautiful forties.

[00:11:55] It’s like the most refreshing trees in the fall. So [00:12:00] what I, what I have found is that. Why are we appealed to a lot of high-end tourists we’re really lacking in terms of appealing to middle market tourism, middlemen, tourists, and badgered make a terrorist, which is why at your new gummy into choose, um, yoga retreats, targeting the middle market to essentially to see that, um, you can come to an office, the fattiest.

[00:12:31] Reasonable cost, which allegedly hasn’t been available, because like I said, we are more on the luxury tourism side of things. So what’s, that really is a beautiful country to visit. If not, we always, my friends and I always laugh and laugh and say that, um, you go to Paris for fashion. For example, you go to Las Vegas for fun, but you come to Hubbard.

[00:12:59] Lily Allen-Duenas: Ooh, [00:13:00] that’s unique. Why would you go there to sleep? 

[00:13:05] Bonolo Phaladze: Because the weather was very small. Like I said, well, the population of the tube is 3 million while I think the size of the country is as large as friends I believe, but we have quite a small population. And in addition to that, we have very strict rules around.

[00:13:27] Um, around alcohol and entertainment. So we had a lot of, um, I’d say rules and regulations around entertainment. So you’d find that clubs would choose the very elite, which is why we often laugh and say that if you want to have fun, go somewhere. But if you want to come and sleep, just come to games because that Telfa plug this pizza literally empty and people are.

[00:13:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: That doesn’t sound too bad to me at all. I’m an early bird. I like to be to bed 

[00:13:58] Bonolo Phaladze: early. [00:14:00] So let’s say you have to come here to sleep. Hey, you would love it. 

[00:14:04] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that sounds so beautiful. And the landscape, as you said, the beautiful bodies of water, um, do you have a lot of wildlife as well? Mountains, 

[00:14:11] Bonolo Phaladze: hiking. We have a lot of wildlife.

[00:14:16] We actually have the largest number of, and elephants in the. In the world, unlikely, because we’re really big on conservation and we have large amounts of wild animals. We have, unfortunately, we don’t have mountains, so you couldn’t go hiking, but we have, we have the largest part of our country that is quieter at the outset.

[00:14:44] And then we have the , which is nestled in the middle of the desert. It’s like an ISS in that, in the middle of the desert. That’s where the majority of our tourist activities happen. 

How do you feel after you spend time on your yoga mat?

[00:14:59] Lily Allen-Duenas: It [00:15:00] sounds beautiful. Um, so to get back to yoga, Benalla I would love to know how you feel after you spend time on your yoga mat?

[00:15:10] And, um, because of how you feel there, how do you think that impacts the space that you create 

[00:15:16] Bonolo Phaladze: for you, the students? I’ve never left my yoga mat feeling joyful. I, so, so yoga makes me feel open in a way that I can’t quite explain. It makes me feel joyous in a way that I can’t quite explain. It also saves me in different ways, for example, that day’s way I go to my yoga mat to just lie down and that’s it.

[00:15:47] And I leave my yoga mat feeling loved and nourished and taken care of. And then those days when I go on my yoga mat and I fingers out all of one hour [00:16:00] dynamic. Yoga flu. And I come out sweating, breathing hard and feeling like my chest just broke open in this so much sun entering my chest. So, Ms. Sam breaking into my heart, it’s such a.

[00:16:20] It’s such an IME explainable feeling that the, how you, that makes me feel it’s indescribable, to be honest. And in that regard, it makes me feel like this is something that I really want to share with people. This is because it makes me feel good. I really want to help other people feel good as well. Um, I always hear it often, maybe at work or my friends would complain about it a little.

[00:16:50] Pain in the bag or my neck does this. I feel so heavy, et cetera, et cetera. And I always say to them, have you tried your guide because they perceive that there’s [00:17:00] a different yoga class, with different needs. And if only people would just give it a go or give it a chance, they would get to really experience the beauty and the joy.

What do you think is your specialty in yoga?

[00:17:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: I love how you described that sun in your chest that is like an explosion of just warmth and nourishment. And I think I loved that. That was beautiful. So, um, what do you think is your specialty in yoga? Um, or on the teaching path of yoga and why? 

[00:17:34] Bonolo Phaladze: So, when I first started teaching, I was more on the high pace.

[00:17:40] Range of teaching, because I think when you’re new, you kind of feel under pressure to perform performative yoga. But the more I practiced, the more, I really took a step back to really, um, be present in my teaching to really take it slow. And I realized [00:18:00] now that I actually loved teaching beginners more than I love teaching.

[00:18:05] Um, intermediate and funds practitioners. I find that. I really love walking the journey with someone who’s just starting out in the beginning, because also what I find is that sometimes intermediate I intermediate because they, they maybe have the strength, but have not necessarily walked the path or walk the journey to actually get proper alignment or to just, you know, Be grounded in that practice.

[00:18:38] But when use, when you teach someone at the beginning of that Eugenie you, I feel like I have the responsibility and the opportunity to give them a solid start to their yoga practice, a solid start that is supported, where they feel supported, where they feel taken [00:19:00] care of, where they feel, um, supported legacy.

[00:19:05] And that way it allows them to really dive deeper or marinate over the practice and really reap the benefits of the practice as opposed to if you were to just arrest them. Or if you had to just work with intermediate, who mostly, always want that higher piece type of thing. 

[00:19:34] Lily Allen-Duenas: I know what you mean.

[00:19:35] I love teaching beginners so much and it’s for me, students who have never tried yoga before. And it is the person that gets to introduce them to yoga and show them what yoga can be and can offer and can give. It just feels like such an honor, like such a gift that they’re trusting me to be the person to introduce it to them.

[00:19:59] Bonolo Phaladze: Exactly. [00:20:00] And I think also the reason why I may have gravitate more towards loving teaching beginners is again, because like I said, the yoga scene in Botswana is really. In its infancy. So the majority of people that walk into a studio has that began as that people who’ve never picked through the before.

[00:20:20] So in that way, I’ve really had to put on the brakes and go back to the base. So that’s where, that’s where I really feel like that’s what I feel like I’m called to do: stop with them, support them, walk with them through this beautiful journey of yoga discovery. 

When people are coming through the doors for the first time at yoga for their first class, what do you think they’re looking for?

[00:20:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yes. I agree. I love that. And you said when people are coming through the doors for the first time at yoga for their first class, what do you think they’re looking for?

[00:20:52] Are they looking for, um, you know, some emotional support? Are they looking to heal back pain? Like what do you find that your students are [00:21:00] looking for? 

[00:21:01] Bonolo Phaladze: Okay, so the two kinds, and then the first kind are the ones that are looking for headstands. I think every studio has people who just come in and look into doing headstands.

[00:21:12] And then however, the majority of our clients, I think we’ve also been deliberate in that way. So the majority of our clients come to us looking to heal that everyday aches and pains. Um, I think largely because the way we set our presence online is that we focus on the four major problems, which is especially for women, which is back pain, which is, um, so we focus on helping them manage back pain.

[00:21:52] We help them manage stress and anxiety as well as. Insomnia. So these are the fourth [00:22:00] things that people come to us complaining about and overtime is that it to center and message around those for discomfort or for your minutes, for, for lack of a better word, 

[00:22:15] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s wonderful that you’re helping people kind of target those four main groups, the stress, anxiety, insomnia, and back pain.

[00:22:23] I know that. Is probably the most common complaint for the average person, just with how we live our lives, that computers and desks and screens. And so sedentary. I think people have a lot of aches and pains, but a lot of stress and anxiety from work. And then of course that goes into our sleep.

[00:22:42] So I kind of blame the lifestyle a bit. 

[00:22:47] Bonolo Phaladze: I’d say key. I think it’s more of a lifestyle thing more than anything, but the beauty about it is that within just maybe two weeks of consistent practice, practice, those that come back and say, oh wow, I’m sleeping better [00:23:00] now. And what was it very intentional about breathwork and our yoga practice and our yoga classes.

[00:23:06] So I love breathing so much. So each and every class for us begins with some type of. And you’d find that, that fast 10 minutes, when you, when we’re done with the breath lake and I asked them how the holiday feels, those days look in those faces, I think moose, especially the Westwind, you wonder what just happened?

[00:23:32] Because suddenly you feel this lightness within yourself that you didn’t even know existed before you started your breath. 

[00:23:40] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, breathwork and pranayama is, it’s so powerful. Um, how it can affect our moods. It’s like the first thing that when, you know, you start to get stressed, the first thing they say is take a deep breath.

[00:23:53] You know, breathing is so important to the state of our being. Um, I’m really [00:24:00] grateful that you prioritize that in all your classes as well. So, um, Manolo, um, what, what, how would you define yoga? I know that it’s such a huge giant term, but I like to ask every guest, if I can remember to ask the question, well, how do you define yoga?

[00:24:18] Bonolo Phaladze: I feel like you gave us a fairly good mother in the sense that it’s. I feel like it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of it’s, uh, it’s charming. It wins the call. It’s loving, it’s supportive, but it also lets you just explore. And when you explore, you still feel supported. You can venture out, but you knew that to tell it’ll hold you at all.

[00:24:46] It’ll support you to love you. It’s all true. You little corners that you didn’t even know existed. I feel like it’s a fairy godmother 

Are you open at all to collaborating with other yoga teachers internationally?

[00:24:57] Lily Allen-Duenas: That is delightful. What a [00:25:00] wonderful response. And you caught me so off guard, that was such a surprise. I love that. Are you open at all to collaborating with other yoga teachers internationally?

[00:25:14] Bonolo Phaladze: Um, I definitely would love to collaborate with local teachers. I would love to collaborate with regional teachers and I would love to collaborate internationally. Um, with local yoga teachers, I feel like we could really go the extra mile or we could go the distance if you could just come together in a way.

[00:25:35] Um, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do that, but I feel like. Locally, you could teach us if he came together, would you need reading? It’ll benefit all of us. And then in terms of regionally yoga in Africa as well, it’s not as. Large or as mainstream as it has in the west, or if he’s not in my experience, because like I said, for, for you to know is for you to go [00:26:00] online and search for, for yoga studios and yoga teachers, but hardly would you add, there are many that you will find online.

[00:26:09] So I don’t know if it’s. And matter of one, not digitally present, but why there, or is it that you one, not as many as we should be. For example, I stayed in Tanzania for, in 2018 and I really struggled to find a yoga studio and a yoga class in the Roseland and it’s quite a large city. Um, so, so I guess. So, I guess that tells me that what there is, but maybe why I’m not as many as a, we could potentially be.

[00:26:44] So that’s why I actually like to have collaborations across Africa or across the region. And then I would definitely also love to collaborate with other international yoga teachers, because I feel like we [00:27:00] benefit when we, together we each bring a different uniqueness. Element to the table and that way we all expand and you all grow in exponential weights.

[00:27:17] Lily Allen-Duenas: Absolutely. That’s why we’re here today. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. 

[00:27:24] Bonolo Phaladze: That’s why I was excited to do this with you 

[00:27:27] Lily Allen-Duenas:  I’m so grateful for the time we’ve gotten together. And just getting to know you better. I love your story and I’m so grateful, but that you created. Uh, yoga and that you’re serving your community and you’re helping train other teachers and giving other teachers opportunities and, um, advocating for yoga and Botswana.

Is there a yoga Alliance for Africa?

[00:27:48] And I’m glad you’re interested too, about kind of drawing together the yoga teachers in Africa, because as you said, um, it can be for me, hard to find, to find yoga teachers, to, to interview, [00:28:00] um, in certain countries in Africa. Is there any? Um, you know, Alliance, you know, I know there’s yoga Alliance, of course the main one, but is there a yoga Alliance for Africa or anything created a structure?

[00:28:14] Bonolo Phaladze: So even funny enough, you should mention you got lions. I also say she, when I was, um, certifying with the Yoga Alliance, I tried to find a, that you would teach us. But I think we’ll do another one. When I last checked, there were just two of us on the platform, two of us who were rages or three at most who are registered well, actually yoga. South Africa has started a community of yoga teachers.

[00:28:42] And I reached out and said to them, please be a part of that. And they allowed me to be a part of that. But in essence, it’s more just a, a south African based. It’s more of a South African beast. You would teach us. But I was like, um, well, [00:29:00] I’m here in Arizona and you guys, I just affected, shoved distance away from me.

How can listeners get in touch with you?

[00:29:07] Lily Allen-Duenas: Bonilla, I would love for you to share with our listeners, um, how they can get in touch with you, like your website or your social media, as well as any offerings that you’re currently have that our listeners could tap into. 

[00:29:20] Bonolo Phaladze: So currently we have a yoga retreat coming up next month.

[00:29:25] From the 20 Fest to the 24th of October, it’s in Ghassani, it’s in them, nothing. Part of what Donna, where we intersect Zim was done as in Bobby Namibia and Zambia. So it’s like at the various. Corner of the four countries. It’s a beautiful place. It’s green. There’s a lot of world. There’s a lot of wildlife it’s in the sinus.

[00:29:55] So literally as you drive into Cassandra, you will be interacting [00:30:00] with wild animals, especially elephants. So if anybody is interested in that, you can FaceTime with a website, Yoon, yoga.com and learn more about that. And next year we’ll have more retreats. Um, hopefully not just in books on that, but in the region as well.

[00:30:21] That will be on the website. Please look out for that. And then in terms of other offenses, we’re currently filming for YouTube. So we’ll be dropping. We haven’t done this in a while, so we’ll be drinking more videos on a weekly basis on our YouTube channel. So please be on the lookout for that. The name for our.

[00:30:46] YouTube channel is your own space yoga. So please check it out as well. And subscribe we’d really appreciate your support. And then you can also check us out on our social media pages. We’re unfaithful [00:31:00] while I’m Instagram and we’re on Twitter, but one of the very active on Twitter. So Facebook and Instagram at your new yoga, both of them are the same.

[00:31:11] So please check them out and subscribe to our channel. We truly appreciate your support. Other than that, we also offer yoga classes, weekly classes in person in Cabrillo NISO. If you ever come to visit, we would really love to have you visit us studio while also waiting on introducing a robust schedule for online yoga class to live live online classes.

[00:31:42] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that’s wonderful. So many great offerings. And I wanted to let my listeners know that, um, Manolo is linked here in the show notes. So just scroll down. You’ll find those links as well as on my website, wild yoga tribe.com. So make sure you click on those. So thank [00:32:00] you so much Panola for joining me today.

[00:32:02] It has just been a true joy to be with you. 

[00:32:06] Bonolo Phaladze: Thank you so much, honey. I’m really humbled by the opportunity to share this lovely purchase that I love so much. What you and the painlessness. I hope that we will collaborate in future. 

[00:32:19] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, me too. I’m sure we will. Um, so thank you again for being with me.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:32:29] Thank you so much for tuning into my conversation today with Bonilla Polarez from Botswana. I hope you found this conversation to be surprising. I loved how she described yoga as being a fairy godmother, and I loved how she explained her yoga practice, feeling like a second. You know, just a sun exploding from, or, or just flowing out from her heart during her practice, nourishing and loving and caring and strengthening.

[00:32:59] [00:33:00] I just think she was so eloquent. So I was so grateful to learn more about Botswana, more about her yoga studio, yoga and all their wonderful offerings. So I hope you tune in. The next episode of the wild yoga tribe podcast and that you connect with yoga online. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:33:27] Thank you for being on this journey with me, it has been a privilege to be with you. I know that your time is precious and I am both humbled and honored that you chose to spend your time with me here on the wild yoga tribe podcast, as you’re on your own inner journey. Remember that you are not alone.

[00:33:46] There are so many of us on this path to awakening. Of self discovery and expansion. And we are right here alongside you to remember to [00:34:00] hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And if you feel called, please share this episode with someone that you think could benefit from it. Leaving a review would also be so appreciated.

[00:34:13] If you’re on social media, I am there too. At the wild yoga tribe, you can tap into all the amazing resources on my website, the wild yoga tribe.com. And you can meditate with me on an insight timer and get your flow on with me on my YouTube channel, where I’ve recorded free yoga classes. If you would like to schedule a private yoga or meditation class with me or a coaching session, you can find the link to do so to book in the show notes or on.

[00:34:41] Again, the wild yoga tribe.com. Thank you once again, dear listener for being with me, may your day be light and bright. May you be peaceful and happy and led on the right path free of suffering and free of sorrow. Be well, dear one. Well,[00:35:00] .

Copyright © 2022 Wild Yoga Tribe LLC. All rights reserved. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Kindly check the corresponding audio before quoting in print to ensure accuracy.

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