For Catalina Muriel, Yoga is a way of life. Photo: Erin Hee.
Catalina Muriel was so nervous about driving when she first came to Australia, she’d stop every 10 minutes. But she now regularly drives the three hours between Wagga and Canberra for university, Yoga and love.
The 33-year-old from Chile has been practising Yoga for more than 15 years, but only started teaching five years ago and is now an instructor at Simp-Lee Yoga.
If you were to ask Catalina what she wants to do with her life, she would say: “I don’t know, sit in the mat and do something in the mat.
“My vision is totally different,” she said.
“The people here come to yoga for fitness. I say, ‘No, my dear, sorry. But here that is not happen’.
“Yoga is not about the fitness, is silent your mind, connecting with your body and breathing.
“And after that, you broken the boundary between your mind and your body, and you come to connect it with yourself.
“This is the way we practise Yoga. We don’t practise Yoga for fitness and if you say, ‘But look at you’.
“Yeah, look at me. But it’s because that is my body, but a lot of people practise yoga have different bodies.”
Ms Muriel wears many hats. On top of being a yoga instructor and supervising Larry’s Cafe, she’s a lifelong student who is learning English in her early 30s and doing a Diploma in Hospitality Management at Canberra Business and Technology College.
Plagued with wanderlust, she has been all over the world since she was 19. Aside from Spanish, she understands French, Italian, Portuguese and a little bit of Estonian.
“For me, the big challenge is the English,” Catalina said. “Now? It’s not too much than before.
“Before, I cry and I need to do therapy.
“My therapist in that moment helped me and say, ‘Catalina, doesn’t matter if you mistake, just do it.'”
She recalled a funny story when she started teaching in Spanish halfway through a lesson, leaving her students in stitches.
If Catalina could, she would stay on the mat for 24 hours each day. Photo: Erin Hee.
“When you start to learn a new language, in one point you are in the middle, your mother language and the new language,” she said.
“For example, when I want to speak Spanish, my brain is like in the middle. I speak too much in English all day, and I want to say something, but I don’t have the word in Spanish.
“My brain is tired because I am in the middle in that moment.”
Now she can freely express herself and is more confident in her English, and even found love in Wagga.
She described her love story with the owner of Larry’s Cafe as “love at first sight” when she first walked in eight months ago.
“I never feel attraction before with the Australian men before,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s so weird.
“He understands that I’m so independent.”
However, Catalina still struggles with the accent down under sometimes.
“Sometimes I am saying with the customer, ‘Please, speak normal English,'” she said.
“Because, for example, I visit the USA. I don’t know nothing about English, but you can understand. The English is more clear, but here is too hard for me.”
Catalina’s dream is to manage a yoga studio in Australia one day, but for now she just wants to teach at Simp-Lee Yoga, finish her diploma and perhaps move in with her boyfriend.
