Kara Goodsell first came to yoga as a way to cope with a frenetic-paced, city lifestyle. Ten years later, following a serendipitous meeting with Byron Yoga Centre founder John Ogilvie, Kara is a senior yoga teacher and key instructor for the Centre's yoga teacher training courses. As she explains, yoga created a space inside that was profound, liberating and ultimately, life-changing.

"Ten years ago, I bought Iyengar's classic book Light on Yoga and took my first yoga class with Eileen Hall at the Ashtanga school ‘Yoga Moves' in Sydney," says Kara. "And I was away." Working at the time as a criminal lawyer in Sydney and partying long and hard on weekends, Kara found that yoga deeply affected her. "Tears would often stream down my face during class though without emotion, without actual crying - I had no idea why. Ashtanga is quite vigorous and masculine and it suited the pace of my life at the time. It straightened me out for a while."

In 2000, Kara sent off a letter to Pattabhi Jois, the founder of Ashtanga, and was accepted to study with him in Mysore, southern India. She spent six weeks doing intensive classes with this modern master. Kara's commitment later stalled and she had dropped yoga by 2002. "I was a bit aimless for a while. I had a couple of stints teaching law in China and moved around Australia quite a lot, oftentimes needing to couch-surf. Yoga was sometimes on, sometimes off before I dropped it entirely."

In early 2003, Kara spent three months at the Buttery, a residential therapeutic community. While at the Buttery, she did some gentle Dru Yoga and began home practise again. "I rediscovered yoga as a gentle, healing modality that became a key tool in my recovery," Kara says. The popular Buddhist proverb ‘when the student is ready, the teacher will appear' seems evident when Kara had a fortuitous meeting with John Ogilivie in May that year. "A friend spoke very highly of John so I went to a class at the Byron Yoga Centre and introduced myself."

Kara settled in the northern New South Wales area and practising law in the small town of Mullumbimby. She began lecturing in property, business and copyright law and cultivated her love of creative writing with a one-year course at Southern Cross University. Kara taught yoga voluntarily at the Buttery in 2005 and finished her level one teacher training course with Byron Yoga Centre in 2006. She started teaching at the Centre that very year. "My understanding of yoga until I met John was only of the physical asanas. I knew that there was a deeper philosophy supporting the practice but hadn't ventured there," says Kara. "I really liked the nurturing energy that John brought to yoga, his calmness and compassion, his joy and faith. I had been meditating a little at the Buttery, which I found helpful, and the level one and two courses gave me many techniques to practise, plus pranayama breathing techniques and the philosophy that underpins it all."

Kara now lives at the Centre in Byron Bay and is busy supporting John in his vision of having yoga centres in every town and village around the world. "John believes that the more that yoga grows as a practise around the globe, the more peaceful the world will be, as yoga is a naturally peaceful practise. This will invariably lead to greater understanding between cultures and self-happiness among practitioners." An ambitious plan and one which Kara is happy to support, accompanying John on all level one and two courses, helping develop the upcoming level three course, and travelling to Vietnam in the next few weeks, to help run yoga teacher training and retreat at The Life Resort in Quy Nhon.

Asked about her home practise, Kara notes that all teachers and practises she's come across have lessons that she uses in her home practise. "I might begin with an Ashtanga-style Surya Namaskar and then merge different styles and focus depending on how I'm feeling and what I need that day." Kara often practises pranayama lying down. "I find it easier to get into a meditative state lying down. I love following the breath, similar to how Vipassana teaches it. Being naturally anxious, I find following the breath deeply grounding. I might practise some pranayama first, then do some asanas, yoga nidra and then lie down and keep my focus on my breath. The richness of nothing is deeply satisfying."

After the Vietnam trip, Kara is off to Europe to look for adventure before returning to co-teach the next level one course in September. Her focus these days is putting into practise the yamas and niyamas, restraints and observances which guide yogis to live a life of integrity. "These are the everyday values that yoga embodies, the most simple and yet, most difficult to live all day, every day, with the support of the Byron Yoga Centre community," says Kara. "Yoga asanas have helped me access emotions and grief stored in the muscles and release it, and the eight limbs of yoga have helped me start cultivating the spiritual aspects. I'm a work in progress and yoga has helped create the space inside to sculpt the spirit and liberate me from the everyday noise and anxiety that the mind invents."

View weekly timetable to see when Kara is teaching at the Centre.