Hamilton Yoga Blog

From 1996 to 2026 - Our Yoga School celebrates 30 Years

On the 25th of September, our yoga school celebrates its 30th anniversary!! What a milestone!! As we approach the anniversary date, I reminisce about the key events instrumental in the evolution of Hamilton Yoga.

Discovering Iyengar Yoga and Founding the School

Starting in the late 1980s, I discovered yoga through friends and began practising with some like-minded people in Newcastle, in many instances copying yoga poses from books rather than attending classes. A good friend of mine had discovered Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga after moving to Byron Bay, which at that time was really starting to become Australia’s yoga centre. Visiting him in July 1992, I booked myself into an Iyengar Yoga workshop there with Rick Birell, who gifted me my first treasured copy of ‘Light on Yoga’ (I later gifted this copy to one of my keen students). My love for Iyengar Yoga was kindled there and then, and I have never looked back.

In retrospect, 1995 was probably one of the most transformative years of my life. A storm of events, opportunities and decisions stirred up what had, until then, been a fairly measured weekly routine of working as an electrician, playing a little music and football (soccer), and practising and teaching some yoga. It started, when, early in 1995, a yoga friend spotted a poster for a ten-day retreat with senior Iyengar teacher Pixie Lillas in the Blue Mountains. We signed up immediately. During that retreat run by Pixie, I befriended a student – a shiatsu masseur, who was also cooking for the retreat. While helping her in the kitchen, with the occasional friendly shoulder rub, she suggested that I should make use of my “great hands”(her words) and instinctual massage abilities, which prompted me to sign up for a remedial massage course shortly after. But more importantly, we also talked about the lack of Iyengar yoga teachers in Newcastle. At the time, Newcastle had a few yoga teachers but nothing compared to the precision and thoroughness of Iyengar yoga. It was these intimate kitchen conversations that made me jump at the opportunity of Pixie’s upcoming Iyengar Yoga Teacher training later that same year. The vision of my own yoga school, the first Iyengar yoga school in Newcastle, was born during this time.

Being young and inspired, everything seemed possible and exciting. Maybe I overdid it a bit that year in 1995, working full-time as an electrician, having an active social life, football meetings and administration, taking lessons at the Conservatorium for double bass, singing in a choir, doing a remedial massage therapy course, and travelling to Sydney monthly for my Iyengar teacher training. I also started a NEIS business course. In hindsight, no wonder I felt a tad worn out that year. But all of it mattered in the years to come.

Finding a Home

After completing my Iyengar yoga teacher training in June 1996, I was ready to register my yoga school business on the 17^th of July and to officially found “Noocastrian School of Yoga”, the first Iyengar yoga school in Newcastle. The very first class as ‘Novocastrian School of Yoga’ was taught at Scott’s Kirk Church Hall on Wednesday, September 25^th, with me as a wet-behind-the-ears teacher and a handful of friendly but enthusiastic students.

After seeing out the year at Scott’s Kirk Church Hall in Hamilton, I moved my classes to Cantrill Hall, owned by St. John’s Ambulance, for the next three years until 1999. During my time doing teacher training and beyond, I would often stay in Newtown with Iyengar teacher friends Craig Sharpe and Jane Robertson who I have met in India during Mr Iyengar’s 80^th birthday celebrations.  They were great mentors to me at that time and raised the pivotal question with me: whether yoga was to be my full-time occupation. While I was super keen on teaching yoga, the future planning and long-term ramifications of doing this as an occupation had not occurred to me before this. I will always be thankful for their words of advice as they encouraged me to start looking for my own place sooner rather than later.

It was a stroke of luck that the opportunity arose to purchase the G.U.O.O.F. Hall at 21 Steel Street. My mother was reading the Newcastle Herald in late October 1999 with a story about the Hellenic Community Centre. It was reported that the Hellenic Community Centre, associated with the Holy Apostles Church, had its DA approved to build their new facilities and community hall at 15-17 Steel Street. The last paragraph of that news article read, “Proceeds from the sale of the hall in Steel St will be used to pay for the new one”. My parents talked to Father Nicholas Skordilis that same day to discuss the possibility of purchasing the hall. A deal was struck, and the deeds were exchanged later in 2000. The Greek community continued to share the hall space for a couple more years until their facilities were completed. On Tuesday 1^st February 2000, I taught the first class at 21 Steel Street, Hamilton, which remains the permanent home of our yoga school to this day.
I will be forever grateful and indebted to my parents, who were able to help with the purchase at that time. Being able to teach more weekly classes effectively made the yoga school now a more viable full-time occupation for me, and allowed me to leave my trade as an electrician behind for good.

Newcastle’s Yoga Boom

When I first established my school, ‘Novocastrian School of Yoga’ in 1996, the yoga community in Newcastle was small enough that you knew all the other teachers in some way or the other. Classes were often held in community halls, surf clubs, school rooms and people's homes. Word of mouth was often the best advertising, as were the pinned flyers in bookshops and cafes (well before the online social media void started).

Going back a few years, well before the real yoga boom started in the late 1990s, Nellie Lester was possibly one of the first teachers to offer yoga in town, and she taught from the old Wickham School of Arts on Hannel Street. Some other teachers’ names are coming to mind as the pioneers of yoga in Newcastle, by no means a comprehensive list. Wendy Osland taught at Wests, where I also taught some classes, and also from her home in New Lambton. Karen Nicholl and Steve Garlick taught in various spaces around the city, while Michael and Shama Morrison taught from the back of their home at 10 Swan Street, where they had established the Newcastle Yoga Centre in 1986. Some ‘old’ Novocastrians may remember Rob Belia, affectionately known simply as “Yoga Rob”.

It was in the late 90s and early 2000s that Newcastle experienced a noticeable yoga boom with more yoga studios opening and yoga teachers moving to the area. Coralie Properjohn taught from a space on Maitland Road, Lisa Stokx established ‘Newcastle Yoga Space’ in Wickham and Hamilton, and Michael Kubitsky ran his ‘Yogology’ school before setting up YogaBody Works with Karl Jarros. Kym Mangos was also part of the yoga boom era, the only other teacher besides me at that time offering Iyengar yoga in Swansea. We first met through playing music together in a small jazz group, and later both attended Pixie’s teacher training and travelled to India to the Iyengar institute together.

Jean Campbell and Darren Clayton attended a few of my classes at ‘Novocastrian School of Yoga’, before founding their studio, ‘Ashtanga Yoga Newcastle’ in early 2002 at its King Street location. I was chuffed to be personally invited to that opening by Jean- a lovely moment in what was becoming an increasingly diverse yoga community in Newcastle.

And I can't talk about the teachers of that yoga boom era in the early 2000s in Newcastle without mentioning Julie Hodges, now a Senior Iyengar teacher in Lismore, who taught for many years at Merewether Surf Club. I particularly remember the many friendly teacher practices and gatherings we shared. There was a real sense of connection among the yoga teachers in town, a small but growing community, long before the city became home to the many more yoga schools and teachers, and gyms, we see today.

Changes overtime – From ‘Novocastrian School of Yoga’ to ‘Hamilton Yoga’

Back in the early days of the school, my class prices were only $10/class, and $8/concession. That was when a cup of coffee was to be had at $2.50, as well. Evidently, there has been a bit of a price increase since, but this occurred alongside many changes, progressive adjustments, inflation, growth and pivotal moments across the three decades of the yoga school as well as in my personal life.

Over the past thirty years, there’s been courtship and marriage, the birth of two children, the death of a parent, multiple trips overseas, including trips to India to the Iyengar Institute, workshops with senior Iyengar teachers and the Iyengar family, there’s been coats of paint and renovations, there’s been a brief business partnership, a name change, a pandemic, and with the growing Iyengar community, a bigger pool of teachers teaching classes and filling in temporarily. Above all, there have been many loyal students turning up to classes week after week, year after year, some very long-term ones, some only dropping in while travelling through town, and without whom the school wouldn’t be what it is today. And, as they say, the rest is history …

30 years of continuously operating this yoga school is momentous and emotional for me at the same time, and I feel very lucky.

Celebrating our 30th anniversary, I would like to thank all and everyone contributing to the path and the becoming of this yoga school and of me developing into a more seasoned, experienced, and yet, still curious and excitable Iyengar yoga teacher.

Thank you for celebrating with me!

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With much gratitude,

Namaste 🙏

David Morley & Hamilton Yoga – Iyengar Yoga School