Teachers

Details of all Vajrasati teachers are as follows…

Founder: Jim Tarran
Jo Johnson
Tabitha Tarran
Suzie Baker
Amber Ward
Beka Card
Karunajala
Khadine Morcom
Anita Hall
Donna Shilling
Nicoleta Carpineanu
Nikki Fee
Leonie Taylor
Charlotte Watts
Tracy Clare Winning

All teachers’ classes
Teacher training

Jim Tarran, founder
Jim Tarran attended his first Hatha yoga sessions in 1990. In 1992 he traveled to India and completed a teacher training at the Patanjali Yoga center in Nepal. One year later he began running classes in Byron Bay Australia. Returning to England in 1994, he began his Iyengar teacher training, successfully graduating in 1996.

Informed by his study and practice of Yoga and Buddhism, and his desire to vitalize practice, Jim uses the tools of Yoga to fund a sense of understanding and engagement of life.

Jim runs drop-ins, courses, retreats, holidays and days in the Brighton area and his popular classes are known for their humour, humanity and depth. Jim devised and runs the Vajrasati teacher training program and has written the main content for this, the community’s website. He also writes monthly for the site’s newsletter.
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Amber Ward
Amber has been practicing hatha yoga since 1999 and stumbled upon Jim’s classes on her arrival in Brighton, in the summer of 2002. Warmed by the humanity and moved by a strong feeling of homecoming, she began teacher training with Jim in the Vajrasati Yoga School almost immediately; graduating February 2005.

Amber experiences yoga as a therapy for the human condition and has a growing interest in the physics of the practice. Alongside her regular drop-in classes, she has become a popular ‘special needs’ yoga teacher, working with those with Down’s Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Autism and other difficulties. She is currently studying for her You & Me Yoga for Special Needs Teacher Training.
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Anita Hall
Anita attended her first yoga class while at university, but didn’t start practising seriously until she encountered Vajrasati Yoga in 2003. She began teacher training in 2005 and currently teaches in Lewes.
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Beka Card
Beka has been journeying with yoga for seven years and graduated from Vajrasati yoga teacher training in Spring of 2006. Beka is also a gardener practicing Permaculture within her work and the principle of sustainability within the whole of life. Her inspiration for practice, therefore, comes from Nature and the emphasis on our re-connection with it. She feels deeply that it is integral to living in this world fully and harmoniously.

She has spent some time in India where she has been exploring the dharma (the way/the truth of things) through many meditation retreats. Her passion to explore the dharma more deeply has taken her to the Dharma Facilitators Programme, where she is learning to develop vital skills for integration into daily life and as a possible vehicle to facilitating retreats and courses.

In the future, Beka will be facilitating combined Permaculture and Yoga courses and retreats that explore Nature, both in the UK and abroad. Beka has also brought Permaculture and Yoga together by producing handmade yoga blocks made from re-cycled wood.
Read Beka’s Indian Diary Part I, Part II, Part III
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Charlotte Watts
Charlotte attended her first yoga class over 10 years ago and immediately knew that it would be a large part of the route to overcoming the long-term illness that she had at the time. She starting attending Jim Tarran’s classes soon after and found that she responded very deeply to the aspect of body intelligence so fundamental in Vajrasati yoga.

In this time she has also become a successful Nutritional Therapist, including co-writing the book The Top 100 Recipes for Happy Kids: Keep Your Child Alert, Focused and Active. She finds that the combination of nutrition and yoga helps her personally to deal with the stressful aspects of modern life. She also uses the principle of yoga within her nutrition work to help people get to the root causes of health problems; as she specialises in stress-related problems, Vajrasati’s focus on calming and working with the nervous system perfectly complements her therapy work. In this way she can work with clients on a one-to-one basis in both disciplines for an all-round body and mind health programme.
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Donna Shilling
Donna’s interest in yoga began whilst travelling in India in 1999 and continued throughout her theatre degree at Dartington College of Arts where Donna attended regular classes at the Forge Yoga Centre in Totnes. Her developing meditation and yoga practice informed her creative exploration of the body giving subtle new insights into the performer’s relationship to the environment.

In 2002 Donna performed nationally and in Europe with her theatre company Deer Park. She found that leading yoga sessions at the start of rehearsals created a heightened awareness of mind and body cultivating a more focussed presence in the performers. These experiences inspired Donna to want to deepen her understanding of yoga further and to continue sharing the practice by learning to teach.

Donna moved to Brighton in 2003 and discovered Vajrasati Yoga, immediately resonating with the balanced pace and non-forceful approach of the classes. She finds that observing the constant changing and unfolding of the body and its energy inspires a deeper connection with ourselves helping us move into a more integrated, healthy and sustainable way of life.
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Karunajala
Karunajala has been practising yoga since 1990 and completed his teacher training in 2006. His emphasis is on relaxation and integration. For Karunajala, yoga forms a key part of his Buddhist practice, and his aim is to communicate that broader perspective to his students.
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Khadine Morcom
Khadine came to yoga by chance in 1997. After finishing university she enrolled on a Buddhist mediation course which led to her first yoga class and she was hooked! Yoga has been very much a part of Khadine’s life since that first class, in fact, Khadine says that yoga is her life! Although having practiced several types of yoga both at home and in India, Khadine has remained a faithful student of Vajrasati since its first beginnings.

‘For me, Vajrasati is the school of yoga I feel complete affinity with. I believe in taking our yoga practice deeper and really delving into truth; mentally, physically, emotionally, wholly not only in our yoga practice on the mat but also in life.’

Outside of yoga or more rightly within yoga, Khadine is passionate about our natural environment, as the provider and support for all life, and she is also an Environment Officer.

Khadine’s teaching style is very calming, supportive and focused, encouraging full release combined with full engagement, with a strong emphasis on the breath.

Khadine graduated from Vajrasati teacher training in May 2006 and has been teaching since September 2004. She lives in Brighton with her partner Simon.
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Jo Johnson
Jo graduated from the first Vajrasati teacher training course in 2002 and has also since become an accredited Active Birth teacher, specialising in yoga for pregnancy.
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Nicoleta Carpineanu
After coming to England in 1998, Nicoleta started practising yoga and meditation. Her relationship with yoga has intensified over the years, becoming an integral part of her life. While travelling in India, Nico complemented her knowledge with an intensive one month yoga/meditation course. This experience enabled her to realize for herself the important relationship between body, mind and spirit.

Keen to build on this, Nicoleta felt inspired to continue learning and practising yoga/meditation for two years in London and Brighton before she started attending Jim Tarran’s classes in 2004. Nico enrolled on the Vajrasati teacher training course in 2006, and feels it contributes a great deal to her continuing journey as a yogi/yoga teacher.

Nicoleta is also a Romanian language teacher/translator and promotes Romanian culture in UK. She also runs the Life Skills Project in Brighton
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Nikki Fee
Nikki has been practicing yoga since 2000 when she realized she needed to start looking after herself. She had a partial disctetomy (part of a disc removed) when she was 18, in 1993, and relapsed in 2000, which spurred her on to start practicing yoga, with which she had an immediate affinity. She discovered that much of her physical pain was triggered mentally from her state of mind.

She completed a foundation course with the British Wheel of Yoga in 2002 and has been practicing yoga ever since. After completing an art foundation course and moving to Brighton to do an arts degree in 2005, she was recommended to go to the Vajrasati School of Yoga at the Buddhist centre. She loved it and felt Vajrasati gave her a much deeper understanding of yoga, and how yoga should be practiced. It sat well with her own beliefs on life; so she went on to do teacher training with this school.

Nikki believes that most mental and physical states can be resolved through yoga, to which there are many paths. Drinking enough water and having a balanced, healthy diet is also fundamental. Through yoga, we become more sensitive, more intuitive and aware, we become whole, united and integrated. This emanates out into the world that surrounds us, as well as bringing inner confidence, faith and belief in both ourselves and in life. The principles of yoga are rules of life.
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Leonie Taylor
Leo has been practicing yoga since 1996 and Vajrasati since 2004. It was during her first pregnancy that Leo found a deeper connection with yoga and, inspired by the positive birthing experience helped by adopting yogic philosophy and practises, she decided to teach, enrolling on the Vajrasati teacher training in June 2006.

Leo currently teaches both general yoga classes as well as Post-natal yoga for new parents and their babies. In these classes, Leo works to create a nurturing environment where mothers and fathers can connect with themselves within their new roles as parents as well as reconnecting physically, emotionally and spiritually to themselves and to others at this magical but often challenging time. Leo believes that this is an enlightening time to approach yoga practise, as you are by nature in the moment, and responding honestly, openly and without judgement to the unpredictable nature of life with a new baby embodies the spirit of moving in and letting go inherent in Vajrasati yoga

Leo is also an experienced journalist and editor, having contributed features on positive parenting to www.gomamatoday.com, Red and The Guardian.

Leo also edits the Vajrasati website and monthly newsletter.
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Suzie Baker
Suzie graduated from Vajrasati teacher training in 2004 and has recently been teaching in Greece.
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Tabitha Tarran
Tabitha, Jim’s wife, graduated from the first Vajrasati teacher training program in 2002 and teaches a busy schedule of classes in Lewes and Brighton.
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Tracy Clare Winning
TC has been practicing yoga since early 2000, and began her Vajrasati teacher training with Jim in 2003, successfully graduating in February 2005. Although she taught regular classes during her final year of training, and after graduating, she has spent the last two years teaching privately, relishing the opportunity of tailoring her teaching to the requirements of her clients, and working closely with them to develop a personal practice suited to their specific needs. She also assists with, and provides class cover for a weekly complex needs class and integrated class, which is open to members of the public.

Early in 2007 TC had the opportunity to attend a Restorative Yoga course taught by Judith Hanson Lasater; a teacher she has much respect for. As well as restorative poses, the course looked at ways of adapting practice to deal with anger, anxiety and depression. With her Vajrasati training providing a solid foundation, TC’s interest in the therapeutic qualities and applications of yoga was sparked. She immediately began practicing the new learnt techniques on anyone who would let her, and is currently investigating the possibilities of teaching a purely restorative class in Brighton on a regular basis. TC feels passionately that this is a deeply beneficial practice that she is keen to share, and hopes to train further with Judith in the not too distant future.

TC’s own practice is varied. She benefits from a combination of early morning ‘Mysore style’ Ashtanga classes, a gentler restorative practice, and Vajrasati-inspired practice. Having studied Vajrasati exclusively for almost seven years, she thoroughly enjoys looking at asana and yoga practice from different perspectives, and investigating the nuances of the different approaches to yoga, all of which seek the same ultimate outcome. She also seeks to refresh her training and inspire her practice with regular courses, and is hoping to study a foundation course in Yoga Therapy early in 2008.
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