Donna Farhi

Donna Farhi is a yoga teacher and the author of five books on practicing and teaching yoga. She has taught since 1982 and lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she keeps horses and practises dressage alongside yoga. Each year she travels to teach in different countries.

Her path began with formal yoga teacher training and a bachelor's degree. By her early thirties she had seen enough people in her private bodywork practice to notice that few improved through passive interventions, while the students in her yoga classes, especially those who also practiced at home, often did. That observation shaped her belief in what she calls "active intervention": educating people about how they can help themselves and building internal resources for self-care. In her words, what separates yoga from many Western medical approaches is the active involvement of the person.

She studied asana with B. K. S. Iyengar in India, then with Angela Farmer to explore a freer style of practice. Her teaching integrates breathing, movement and inner inquiry, and she teaches the restorative technique of yoga nidra. Her books include The Breathing Book, Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit, Bringing Yoga to Life, Teaching Yoga, and Pathways to a Centered Body, written with Leila Stuart. In 2021 she was the first yoga teacher to present on the MasterClass platform.

In her intensives, practitioners are invited into self-inquiry and encouraged to adapt each practice to their own structure and level of conditioning. The emphasis is on refining simple, accessible practices rather than virtuosic postures. Her recorded Mastering Simplicity sessions follow the same thread: as practice matures, a few essential practices come into focus and the unnecessary falls away. She also teaches yoga teachers, and has written of the value yoga teachers bring to their students and communities.