Paula Hines is a senior yoga teacher and writer from London. She has practised and studied yoga since 2001 and has been teaching since 2011, now with a particular focus on restorative yoga, yin yoga and yoga nidra. Her own experience of yoga as a tool for transformation led her to teaching after fourteen years of working in the TV industry and fuels her desire to share the life-enhancing benefits of yoga with others. She is author of the book, Rest + Calm: Gentle yoga and mindful practices to nurture and restore yourself (Green Tree, Bloomsbury Publishing) and a columnist for OM Yoga Magazine.
Join Paula for a special Restorative Yoga class which you can register for through the link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restorative-yoga-with-paula-tickets-690757392957?aff=oddtdtcreator
Tell us a bit about yourself…
I’m Paula, a yoga teacher and writer from London. I’ve practised yoga for over 20 years and after a 14-year full-time career in television, where I also wrote comedy, I began teaching yoga in 2011. I’ve also written for OM Yoga Magazine since 2011 and my book, Rest + Calm: Gentle yoga and mindful practices to nurture and restore yourself was published in 2022. I still do some occasional script development work (in my old job I was a script editor), though yoga and writing are currently my focus. My teaching has an emphasis on restorative yoga, yin, yoga nidra and yoga for menopause.
What does a typical day look like for you?
As a self-employed freelancer, my schedule tends to vary day-to-day and over the course of the year. It depends on whether I’m more in teaching mode, writing mode or script mode. Depending on the kind of work I’m doing I might be reading scripts or writing an article in the daytime and teaching yoga in the evening.
How did your yoga journey begin and what inspired you to become a yoga teacher?
I started yoga in 2001 as a way to ease stress and back pain. A colleague suggested yoga might be helpful and I thought it was worth a try. I was working full-time in TV – very long hours and late nights were the norm. I did indeed gain relief from back pain and stress, but I also gained much more. If you’d told me back then that I would end up teaching yoga I would have probably laughed in your face! But yoga unexpectedly became a big part of my life and it reached a point where my desire to share with others some of the benefits I had experienced overrode everything.
What inspired you to specialize in your practice?
This is something I’ve written about in Rest + Calm, where I share some of my story. In terms of restorative yoga, it was injury, discovering I had a chronic condition and burnout. I’d been doing a lot of dynamic asana practice that (unbeknownst to me at the time) was exacerbating the physical pain I was experiencing. Restorative yoga combined with yoga therapy changed the way I practice and teach.
How have you seen yoga benefit your students?
When I’m teaching I see the differences in people at the end of a class or workshop compared to when they arrived. In a restorative session, especially, I enjoy when you can sense the calm in the space as nervous systems settle. From the feedback I receive afterwards, I notice that people who experience conditions such as C-PTSD, chronic fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, chronic stress and more regularly tell me they have found the practices helpful. Though yoga isn’t a cure all, it is rewarding to be able to share practices that offer tangible benefits and to see those positive results.
What is your favourite quote or life motto?
It’s the Maya Angelou quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
