Karin is a proud Kiwi (New Zealander) who returned home to "Middle Earth" in 2015 after living and working in Europe for 23 years. In her "previous life", prior to becoming a yoga teacher, she performed professionally for 16 years on musical theatre stages in the West End, London and throughout Germany in such shows as "Miss Saigon", "Joseph", "Beauty and the Beast", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Cats" (where she met Markus!). She also worked for 6 years as a casting associate for Stage Entertainment Germany.
She was first introduced to yoga in 1999 while living in Berlin, Germany. She rocked up to the closest studio in the neighbourhood knowing nothing about yoga and immediately fell in love with it. Little did she know that she had fallen in love with what she now refers to as “the ballet of yoga” – Iyengar yoga with its discipline, alignment and accuracy that completely grooved with her professional dance background.
After years of practicing Iyengar yoga and attending workshops with renowned teachers such as Manju Jois (Ashtanga), Rita Keller (Iyengar), Clive Sheridan (Hatha), Mark Whitwell (Heart yoga), David Lurey (Vinyasa), Lance Schuler ( Inspya), Patricia Thieleman (Spirit) she attended a 3 day workshop with Power Yoga founder Bryan Kest that transformed and liberated her and her yoga practice. She finally understood the deeper spiritual aspect of yoga, which was the reason she had started practicing yoga in the first place. Shortly after, she completed a 350 hour Power Yoga Teacher Training with Bryan in Maya Tulum and began teaching at Power Yoga Germany in Hamburg.
The following year in search of yoga anatomy knowledge she completed a further teacher training with Yin Yoga & Anatomy "guru Paul Grilley who rounded and balanced out her yoga practice. Since then, she has completed several trainings with Paul and Suzee Grilley. Now Karin is a yin junkie, always searching for her next yin fix, and she loves spreading the gospel of yin wherever she goes. She believes yin yoga is the perfect and vital complement to not only yang forms of yoga but also to the fast paced yang lives of our modern western society.
Karin’s style of teaching is authentic, calming and personal, creating a nurturing and safe space for the students to surrender into themselves. Her classes focus on discovering the meditative aspect of yoga through melding the breath with the asanas with a strong emphasis on respecting and honouring the unique anatomical, emotional and physical states of the student.
She practices Vipassana meditation and is a trained traditional Thai masseur.
She is thankful to her family and friends and all her yoga teachers and students who have assisted her on her yoga journey, and most of all, she is grateful to her son Kahanu for fast tracking her yoga practice off the mat and into “real life”…every minute of every day!