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november/december 2017yogajournal.com.auAYJ INTERVIEW
in ir ti n
THE MULTI-TALENTED Mary-Louise
Parkinson, 60, used yoga to keep herself
in balance during a high-profile
international career in IT. During the
1990s, she began extensive training in
yoga, started Harbord Yoga, then
developed and ran an eco yoga retreat
as well as co-founding a charity in
Nepal, The Asha Foundation. She now
heads the International Yoga Teachers
Association (IYTA), a non-profit
training provider and membershipWisdom and
warnings from a
teacher of teachers
Mary-Louise Parkinson has been a teacher to
the teachers since before yoga was in fashion.
Now, at 60, with an enviable yoga resume,
she encourages yogis considering becoming
teachers to do their research before choosing and
committing to a particular training program.
Interview by Tamsin Angus-Leppan
organisation for yoga teachers around
the world, which celebrates 50 years
this October. Mary-Louise is passionate
about high-quality training for yoga
teachers.How did you first come to yoga?
In the 1970s, yoga was introduced at my
school. I remember being really excited
and going home and saying to my
mum, “We even exercised our eyes and
we go inside and look at our organs.”After school, I went on to travel the
world and take on a demanding and
exciting career in IT, but I sought out
yoga classes wherever I went. I spent a
lot of time travelling for work to Silicon
Valley and London, and back then it
was hard to find yoga classes. I’d go to
meetings and sit in Lotus Pose at the
board table. So they all knew me as the
yogi. I’d fly to the States, go for a swim,
do yoga nidra, and go to a meeting.
Everyone was always blown away by
how balanced I was.What made you train in yoga?
My first marriage was on the rocks and I
really started to come back to my yoga. I
joined North Sydney yoga centre, headed
by Diana Ewing, in the late 1980s. Diana
said to me one day, “Why don’t you
become a yoga teacher?” I thought, why
would I want to be a yoga teacher? I’ve got
a great career. She just kept seeding the
idea and eventually encouraged me to
do the IYTA training. Being the
international person I was, I wanted a
diploma that would give me the ability
to teach anywhere in the world, and that
would be respected and acknowledged
anywhere in the world, which the IYTA
diploma is. The other thing was that I’ve
always been a feminist. I didn’t want to
do a teacher training that was led by a
guru or locked into one particular style
of yoga. So again, IYTA provided me
with that base platform from a non-
profit organisation. It wasn’t led by a
bloke — it was a democratically elected
organisation, so it ticked all the boxes
for me. I did the IYTA training in
1996-97, then I went on to do Yoga
Synergy, 1998-99, and then Dru teacher
training, 1999-2001, and then I went on
to post-graduate training.What advice do you have for
people thinking about training in
yoga?
The thing I’m really disgusted with is
the number of people offering yoga
teacher training courses (who) did a
200-hour course in Bali over a month,
two years ago, and now they’re running
their own teacher training. At IYTA
we have over 30 people on our faculty.
To think that you can have one person
running yoga teacher training is
arrogant. Teachers should be
recommending that their students
complete a good quality teacher
training with a focus on safety. PHOTO: KATIE BROWN