eva raal yoga
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About

Eva has been immersing herself in various wisdom traditions and contemplative practices since her early teens. She started practicing yoga in 2006 and has been teaching since 2015. Through her extensive travels she has had the privilege to explore a number of different yoga styles and study with many inspirational teachers from around the world, most notably Richard Freeman, Mary Taylor, Petri Räisänen and Cape Town locals Jim Harrington and Michael Schabort. 

Eva was first introduced to Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga in 2014 and has in recent years dedicated herself almost exclusively to teaching this style of yoga, running a daily Mysore program from 2021-2024 at Ashtanga Yoga School Noordhoek. From her personal experience she truly believes in the transformative power of this practice and its potential to bring us into a more honest and harmonious relationship with ourselves and others. She teaches this practice with intelligence, care and contagious enthusiasm, deeply devoted to the tradition but free from dogma and hierarchical power dynamics. Eva sees the student-teacher relationship as one of reciprocal learning and creative collaboration. She supports her students with quiet attentiveness and her gentle, intuitive touch and holds a space that is non-competitive and welcoming to people of all ages and abilities. 

Eva’s teaching is inspired by her personal daily practice, regular attendance of courses and retreats with senior Ashtanga teachers and her continuous study of ancient philosophies and scriptures. Eva is also a dedicated practitioner of Vipassana meditation (as taught by S.N. Goenka) and a student of Tibetan Buddhism, under the tutelage of Jennifer Woodhull. Recently, she also completed a two-year Certificate Training in Mindfulness Based Interventions with the Institute for Mindfulness in South Africa (IMISA), in collaboration with Stellenbosch University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Eva has an M.A. in Classical Literature and spent eight years lecturing Latin, Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew at Stellenbosch University. Her passion for ancient languages and her love for yoga naturally led her to the study of Sanskrit and she has been a guest teacher on this subject at several yoga teacher trainings since 2018. Eva is also a student of veda chanting with Shantala Sriramaiah, in the Śringeri or Mysore lineage from South India.

In her free time you’ll find her in the mountains or the forest.