Major Points:

1. Carla started yoga after refusing for many years to go to classes and found that the stillness and meditation were immensely beneficial to her and she started taking classes regularly.
2. Through classes and studying, she found many tools to increase her happiness.
3. She took teacher training, opened her own studio with a mission to help people find their why and their happiness using the tools to yoga.

                                                This is episode 123 of changing the face of Yoga and my guest today is Carla Simpson and Carla is known for being full of energy, love, and inspiration. She's very enthusiastic about life and love and wants to experience as much of what life has to offer. She has discovered her why. My mission in life to help others live a happier and more fulfilled life. And she's going to share with us how she uses this inspiration in her yoga teaching. . And to hssist for students. She opened her own yoga school four years ago, Happy Hot Yoga, and they have a range of classes to suit everyone. And they also are a yoga community, a real family. We have social dinners once a month, workshops and yoga retreats. So welcome Carla. And would you like to add anything to that introduction?

01:47                                     No, I think you got it all. Thank you very much for having me on the show. And you're right. I do. I'm a big lover of life. That's cool.

01:56                                     Great. Okay, let's start there. You said you were on a journey of self-discovery and that's when you discovered your why. Can you talk a little bit about that.

02:02                                     Growing up, I hated yoga. You couldn't have got me into a yoga class at all. My mom was always doing yoga and I just remember, getting up in the morning and her out in the lounge room on her yoga mat doing in class. It wasn't me and she always trying to encourage me, but I've always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Growing up I got very into fitness and running marathons, things like that. It was only that my knee was really starting to ache a lot in the long runs. My physio kept saying, you should go to yoga, it will really help you. And I was like, no, I don't do yoga, I don't do yoga. Anyway one day, I cried my way to the finish of one of the races, and I was in my head, I'm not going to do this anymore.

03:04                                     So I'd dragged myself to a yoga class and yeah, it wasn't the first class that definitely changed my life. But in that sort of journey into the first few classes, I, I first started with Bikram Yoga, more because it was the adrenaline as well of the hotness, the hard. I found it very difficult and I couldn't believe that I couldn't do some of it. So that was what dragged me back. And then I had gone to visit my friend who lived a little bit out of the town that I live in and I thought I was going to do a Bikram yoga class. But when I got there, the teacher had said, oh, sorry, we had to change your schedule is not bikram Yoga. And at that point I would have walked away. but I'd already paid.

03:55                                     I was a student then, so I was like okay, fine. So I dragged myself into these class and it was like a slow class and it was strong. It was something teacher said to at the end in savasana and it honestly changed my life. I still remember it. I was just lying there and she says, so it's now time to turn off the voices in your head. If you think you have no voices in your head that was a voice that just told you that you have no voice in your head. aI was like, oh my God, I have a voice in my head and I'm not the only one. Then that was the start for me was I wanted to find out more about how to find that stillness in that space.

04:43                                     And I started to get really into yoga then and more into mindfulness and meditation. And I really discovered what true happiness is without our voice telling us different things or what we should be doing or could be doing. But how I could just feel happy and joyful in any moment and that it was my choice. So that was the start of my whole journey. And then I just really loved what yoga had done for me. And the closest yoga school to where I live was about 20 minutes and I just one day, sort of having a conversation with my ex-boyfriend at the time, so said, why isn't there a yoga school around our area? And then anyway, that put the plan in my head and the plan started to grow and so I opened up my own yoga school.

05:34                                     Oh, excellent. you say that you are helping people find their purpose and you have a multitude of ways to do it. You've been an entrepreneur or business owner, global backpacker and a podcast host. And so I like all these different ways you're looking at it, but you are a yoga teacher and so how are you trying to meet that purpose, that mission, that why through your yoga studio or your yoga teaching.

06:06                                     Well really, for me it's just about sharing my experiences and my knowledge throughout my class and then throughout the studio. So if you come to a class with me, you probably get one of my stories. I just spent a month working in an orphanage in India over December. And so the first part of me coming back, I was sharing stories of that and I'm really just trying to educate people that we can be happy no matter what's going on in our lives at any one point. And life is a journey. We're always going to have ups and downs. Kind of like yoga class, we're falling in, we're falling out of poses.

06:48                                     But that stillness in there is  being okay with whatever is going on around us. So that's really what, for me it is about and just really helping people to be happy with themselves. We spend so much time growing up trying to change ourselves. Every advert on television wear this makeup, whiten our teeth or whatever it is. But I think we all can just learn that we're perfect the way we are. And it's a hard journey sometimes, but that's why I want to help people realize.

07:30                                     Your school is Happy Hot Yoga, so I assume that you're doing hot yoga. You said that you like the adrenaline at one point and so isome of them would probably be very physical, but it sounds to me like you are saying that and please tell me I'm wrong, the meditation, the stillness, how you think about yourself, the self-talk, all of that is more of the journey to being happy then actually the physical. Is that a fair statement?

08:09                                     Yeah, for sure. Yeah. The physical just helps us sometimes find that space and I think a lot of us feel good when we are being physically active as well. So we have a range of classes at a studio. We not all just power, strong classes. We have the slow, the meditation, the yin classes as well but I think that often in that flow or it's in that everyday life, where it can get chaotic that we sometimes need to learn to just be okay with the stillness and be able to find the stillness even when things are strong around us or we are caught up in an argument or whatever it is or your yoga class. I think that you find the true happiness when you can allow this, not necessarily the stillness, but you can allow yourself to have the, maybe the chitter chatter or the boys talking on the sidelines and you didn't have to be so involved in that by choosing to react or choosing to just let it pass by.

09:16                                     You now have a yoga studio that's in an area that didn't have one before. And how are you introducing the community to Yoga?

09:31                                     Well, we've been here for four years now. So a word of mouth is definitely a great tool. But I do lots of different things. Like we have obviously our Facebook and social media, but we have these signs up and I put our flyers and offer free classes to mostly people in cafes around the area. We might go out, I've spoken at events. Earlier this year I spoke at a big event in Gosford, which is a health event. So I spoke and hosted the meditation in the morning there. It's just brand awareness really, but I think what assisted me was word of mouth and it has taken four years to build the studio up. I've got other teachers now we're running workshops, teacher trainings, things like that. It has been a climb. I'm not going to lie. That's what I love about it too; is it has been journey. And I remember those days of first opening the studio and having no one show up to some classes. And it broke my heart. But as you chug on and the next class someone will show up. And that's what happened. And over time it has grown.

10:52                                     When you talked about your first experiences with Yoga, I think it's important sometimes that we take into consideration what the student is going through, because our own ego, like it is upsetting when you have a class and nobody shows up. I've been there. But when you're talking about, the first class wasn't all that great, but you went back and then you finally found what made sense for you. How do we make that transition for the students, especially a new student to understand that there's so much that yoga offers and maybe this particular class or this particular way of doing things, isn't it? But that there's lots and lots that they can dip into.

11:46                                     Oh, sure. And that I think, is something that is so important that new students understand. So when new students walk into my studio, I always introduce myself and we have a community so everyone might be chatting around and we'll introduce ourselves to the new person. Even the other students will. My students are very welcoming as well, which is lovely. Then throughout the class I always talk about picking the options that best fit you, taking your time, that yoga is a journey and we're not really here training to be able to stand on our head or to do all these amazing, cool poses. I think we're just really training to become better at life.

12:28                                     And that's what I often say to people is that, not every day is our day and some classes I turn up to I walk away thinking, Oh God, I've had enough. I'm done. But that's the shit that I'm going through on that day. And, sometimes we can step back from things so involved in ourselves and just let it all fall off the mat. Then we can realize that. And I do believe that it takes a new client a few classes. I do love to watch that journey myself. I always say you see these new people and I was one of them; they can't shut their eyes, their eyes are looking around at everyone else and they can't sit still, they're twitching.

13:10                                     But then I always say that four classes in, then you see it'll drop away and you see them slowly sink into their mat and they shut their eyes and it's like that light bulb goes off and they're like, oh my goodness. I think that it is a journey and I think it's important to explain that to clients and it's still a continuing journey to me as well. Gosh, I don't think we're ever going to be perfect. And there's no such thing anyway, but I'm training to be better at my life and I think yoga helps me become a better person and to make better choices in my life.

13:44                                     You've been a variety of things. I love the global backpacker, and you're doing podcasts and I assume that the entrepreneur and business owner has to do with yoga, but maybe you had other things. But why did you choose the yoga path, given all of these great things that you've done?

14:09                                     I still do them as well. I always say to people I am a jack of all trades. I always say yoga really changed my life and it made me become a softer person. I'm not so hard. Not that I was hard. But I still am very driven, still, that Type A personality, but yoga allows me to come back to my roots. And I still travel a lot. But yoga has taught me so much about just the way to live life, gratitude and kindness. Just trying to be conscious of the little moments that I get to experience.

15:02                                     So maybe once when I backpacked I wasn't so aware of everything going on around me. when now when I do it, it's a totally different experience and I'm just very humbled and grateful for the people I meet and the kindness that is shown across all areas of the world. I do think that yoga and the yoga teachings, the yoga philosophy has helped me as a person to be able to understand that and to understand myself more and to understand really what makes me feel the best. And it might not necessarily be the yoga practice, but it might be showing acts of gratitude to people, smiling at someone down the street. But for me that whole lesson came through yoga.

15:47                                     But you've really delve deeper into that. Do you try to introduce the yoga philosophy in your classes?

16:00                                     Yeah, always, but always doing different teachings. Each week I'll have a different theme in the week. We're always learning about all that. Yes.

16:08                                     Okay. And how do your students react to that?

16:12                                     Oh, they love it, they love it. Yeah. So at the studio you get like all different, you might still get a work out, but you'd definitely get some yoga learnings and I do a monthly newsletter with a little passage in it. There's always things. Then I do believe that as I just said, that everyone that comes to our studio will walk away maybe more physically fit. Yes. Maybe not. They might come to the meditation classes, but they will come with a deeper understanding of what I believe life is truly about.

16:47                                     Is there anything that you would particularly like to either expand on that we've talked about or something we haven't touched on at all that you would like to share with the listeners?

17:00                                     I mean, my purpose and my why now is to help people, to be able to make those conscious choices every day that they can choose to be happy. They can choose to smile no matter what's going on around them. And yes, for me the teachings came from Yoga, but that was my personal journey. So whatever teachings anyone can get from me or from my journey, then hopefully that helps them become better in living their life. Because I think we're all on a different journey. And yoga is so broad. There's so many wonderful things that we can learn from yoga or take from Yoga and my job I feel is just to open up what those lessons are in the way that people like to experience it at my studio. And then hopefully they can take that and share that with their life and their families and the way that their world.

17:59                                     You're trying to help people find their purpose is what you told me. How does that go from having a yoga class? And I understand that you're certainly trying to offer them a really large spectrum of yoga. but do you think that's how they come to that purpose when they can quiet the mind and feel a little better about themselves?

18:32                                     I totally believe that. Yeah. When you start to quiet your mind and you realize you've got an intuition and that intuition is talking to us, and if we allow ourselves to listen to that, that's when your purpose comes back. So sometimes it's a journey to get to that point, but that is definitely what happens, I believe, and in my own experience.

18:56                                     So, let's talk a little bit about the podcast. Why did you decide to start a podcast?

19:05                                     I loved podcasts myself. I love listening to podcasts. I have a little puppy dog and I was always walking down the street and listening to something and it just makes me smile. It was one of my favorite things to do. And I was just talking to a friend how I wanted to share my story. I wanted to share my learnings and my teachings about yoga and happiness and how I could do that maybe on the bigger scale. It was literally over a cup of coffee. She said, well, Carla, you're such a great chatter. You could do your own podcast. And then I was like, I've never even thought about it. And I was like, oh my gosh. And then, and again, a seed was planted in my head and then I sort of, again, just sort of let it sit there. And then throughout my yoga, my meditation, listening to my intuition, I decided that, yeah, I'd give it a go and see what would happen. And that's what happens.

20:09                                     Explain your podcast purpose or whatever you would like to call it in a few words. I know that you interview people, but what are you trying to get across?

20:26                                     Happiness and that happiness is a choice. So that's my main message. But then I interview different people from just all different areas of life that are doing things. And I ask them about things that make them happy because everyone finds happiness from a different thing. This is what I'm trying to change; the education is that happiness doesn't come from external things. We grow up thinking if we get that job or we get that house or we get that boyfriend, then we're going to be happy. But happiness really comes from within and the choices that we make in every day. And I think that yoga has helped me learn to listen to my intuition so that I can make those right choices and then make me a happier person.

21:11                                     I'm trying to get everyone's view on what they do to make themselves that little bit happier every day. And then we educate more people out there that these little things like maybe smiling at a person down the street. Someone was saying their happiest moment is when they call their mom every day just to say hello to their mom. so just that there are so many different ways we can live our life and be consciously aware of the choices we're making to make sure that we feel good and we feel happy. And we can learn to listen to that intuition and be more complete with just even the incomplete.

21:52                                     It sounds really interesting to have all these people talking about what makes them happy. I agree with you. I bet that most of them aren't external, more internal about what you do and what you think. So thank you so much, Carla. This has been great And thank you so much Carla for coming on the podcast. I really love your message. I think it's great and that it's coming through you as a result or as a start from yoga.

23:23                                     Yoga is something that's part of me now and I could never imagine my life without it. And once I could never imagine my life with it. All those people out there that haven't quite yet stepped into that. It can be scary to step onto that mat, but honestly I say to people all the time, that changed my life.

23:42                                     Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming.

23:45                                     No worries. Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely.

Contact details

email: [email protected]

website is www,carlamaree.com.au and \ www.happyhotyoga.com.au

Facebook: happyhotyogaWoyWoy

Instagram is CarlaMareeSimpson and happyhotyoga

Podcast: Get Happy Hour podcast.