Yoga event aims to contribute to wellness of community
After teaching yoga all over the world, one Wanaka woman has been using her love for wellness to raise money for local charities while celebrating International Yoga Day.
Originally from Brazil, local yoga instructor Keity Garcia moved to town in 2019 after spending some time travelling around Asia and teaching yoga in India.
When she made the move to Wānaka, she checked if there were any events celebrating the International Day of Yoga only to find the day was not acknowledged the way she hoped it would be.
The day is proclaimed by the United Nations and celebrated worldwide on June 21 every year.
Ms Garcia took it upon herself to organise an annual event that would bring together yoga teachers, offering locals a full day of classes while also raising money for local charities.
The first celebration took place right after one of the Covid lockdowns and was successful in its ability to bring people together after a hard time.
"I also had this motivation because everybody was struggling with the lockdown. So I said, this is a great opportunity for people to come together," she said.
This year the event will celebrate its sixth edition in Wānaka, with donations going towards St John and Community Link's Cold Kids Campaign.
Ms Garcia added that the classes for this year will be held at the Wānaka Community Hub and will focus on the international theme, Yoga for One Earth, One Health.
"It's very connected with how we deal not only with ourselves but how we are connected with the earth because the base of yoga is basically we are part of the universe."
The classes are on for the whole day and include a range of practices such as laughter yoga, sound journey and meditation.
The event is also welcoming Kirtan Journey Queenstown, a group that teaches the practice of Kirtan, where participants are taught how to sing mantras with music in the background.
The event is donation-based, with a suggested donation of $25 for the day but participants are welcome to donate as much or as little as they would like.
Over the years the event has grown, attracting more people and raising more money.
Last year alone, $1600 was raised, with half being given to Community Link and the other half donated to Community Hub.
Ms Garcia said their record number of attendees was during the event's fourth year, when 135 people took part in the sessions.
As well as attracting participants, the event has also brought a range of teachers, some of who are visitors in town for the ski season and wanting to be part of something special.
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Otago Daily Times
7 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Yoga event aims to contribute to wellness of community
After teaching yoga all over the world, one Wanaka woman has been using her love for wellness to raise money for local charities while celebrating International Yoga Day. Originally from Brazil, local yoga instructor Keity Garcia moved to town in 2019 after spending some time travelling around Asia and teaching yoga in India. When she made the move to Wānaka, she checked if there were any events celebrating the International Day of Yoga only to find the day was not acknowledged the way she hoped it would be. The day is proclaimed by the United Nations and celebrated worldwide on June 21 every year. Ms Garcia took it upon herself to organise an annual event that would bring together yoga teachers, offering locals a full day of classes while also raising money for local charities. The first celebration took place right after one of the Covid lockdowns and was successful in its ability to bring people together after a hard time. "I also had this motivation because everybody was struggling with the lockdown. So I said, this is a great opportunity for people to come together," she said. This year the event will celebrate its sixth edition in Wānaka, with donations going towards St John and Community Link's Cold Kids Campaign. Ms Garcia added that the classes for this year will be held at the Wānaka Community Hub and will focus on the international theme, Yoga for One Earth, One Health. "It's very connected with how we deal not only with ourselves but how we are connected with the earth because the base of yoga is basically we are part of the universe." The classes are on for the whole day and include a range of practices such as laughter yoga, sound journey and meditation. The event is also welcoming Kirtan Journey Queenstown, a group that teaches the practice of Kirtan, where participants are taught how to sing mantras with music in the background. The event is donation-based, with a suggested donation of $25 for the day but participants are welcome to donate as much or as little as they would like. Over the years the event has grown, attracting more people and raising more money. Last year alone, $1600 was raised, with half being given to Community Link and the other half donated to Community Hub. Ms Garcia said their record number of attendees was during the event's fourth year, when 135 people took part in the sessions. As well as attracting participants, the event has also brought a range of teachers, some of who are visitors in town for the ski season and wanting to be part of something special.
Newsroom
3 days ago
- Newsroom
Jacinda, glossed over
There are gaps, big gaps, in the new memoir by Jacinda Ardern. It is not a book which gives the full political context of her rise and fall, or at least her rise and exit. There's not as much as might be expected on the Covid years. No mention at all of her 2020 election opponent Judith Collins, with very little on other Nats. Bare references to the Covid-era economic borrowing and spending, or of the suite of second-term political quicksands like Three Waters that dragged her government and Ardern personally down. It is a global book, not local. New Zealand politics in the abstract. Yet she opens up in many areas, and avoids the traps of political autobiographies in which the great and good name drop, show off, reinvent history and attack their opponents. There's minimal retailing of conversations with world leaders. She shares observations about Prince William from close quarters, warms to Angela Merkel, reveals her message on the phone to Donald Trump after the mosque terror attacks – for the US (and by implication the President) to show sympathy and love to 'all Muslims' – and recalls Malcolm Turnbull helping her at an Apec security check. No indulgences with Trudeau or Xi or Boris, no Bolger-style 'As I was telling the President'. For someone so studied, prepared and self-aware, it's remarkable how often Ardern just blurted out her most famous lines. 'Let's Do This', the election slogan that helped Labour win power in 2017, was at first a throwaway line on one of her Instagram posts. 'Kindness' came out as the essence of what she wanted her Government to exhibit, in a conversation with John Campbell as she drove to Government House to be sworn in as Prime Minister in 2017. 'They Are Us', the nation's unifying cry after the Christchurch mosque massacres in 2019, was something she said as she downloaded to her friend Grant Robertson in a moment of dread and despair, when about to address the nation. He told her, 'Just say that.' The origins of the phrases are gently revealed among the scores of anecdotes and insights in A Different Kind of Power. In each instance she appears surprised at herself, a 'chronic overthinker' who has realtime discoveries of the mot juste, of the historic. 'Kindness,' she muses after recalling the Campbell conversation. 'It is a child's word, in a way. Simple. And yet it encompassed everything that had left an imprint on me.' The book also peels back the deeper origins of her ability, on the spot, to capture a mood, to distil her purpose and look to inspire – and the origins of her senses of compassion and social justice. It leans heavily on Ardern's personal formation and challenges. It is a different kind of memoir. And that will make it stand out among the reminiscences and revelations of New Zealand political leaders. She writes at some length about growing up in Te Aroha, Murupara and Morrinsville, about her family, and about her life in the Mormon church. The family memories are powerful: The primary school-aged Jacinda coming across her father Ross, the police sergeant in Murupara, surrounded by menacing men 'in leather pants and jackets' outside his station, and being told 'Keep walking Jacinda', unable to help. Her mother Laurel's mental breakdown in the same forestry town. Murupara was tough. Poverty, struggle, gangs, unfairness. Ardern writes that years later, when asked when she first became political, she realised it was there in that central North Island community. 'I became political because I lived in Murupara.' Then in an ordered, chronological way A Different Kind of Power traverses high school, knocking on doors for the church, university, initial political awakenings, OE and the pull of national politics. In every phase there is a building of the picture of a woman who is at once sensitive to a fault, image-conscious, self-conscious, media-conscious and trying to live by her own conscience. Open and closed Ardern can write. No surprises there, with the talent for communicating, messaging and indentifying with her audiences that she showed us over 14 years in politics. She professes herself, in the acknowledgements, to have been a 'speechwriter' since the age of 13, and implies the book benefited hugely from Ali Benjamin who she credits with being 'teacher, editor and coach all rolled into one'. Yet a ghost didn't write this; Ardern's voice is obvious from the opening dedication 'to the criers, worriers and huggers' to the final words. Memoir writing is thinking, lived experience, revelation and anticipation of what the reader might want answered. There was always going to be a mountain of material to sift through. Ardern's answer is to be relentlessly open, personally, and largely subdued and non-controversial politically. In the opening scene as she awaits a pregnancy test result in a friend's bathroom she wonders about the day's coalition talks and her feeling the equivalent of imposter syndrome. 'We were never meant to win. And I was never meant to be leader.' The book's title A Different Kind of Power might betray a hint of a self-help text, a motivational Ted talk or a 'how to win elections and influence history' lecture. It's much more than that. It offers up Jacinda Ardern as a lifelong doubter who through conviction, talent, political accidents and then empathy, rose to international acclaim. What's missing from this book is almost as interesting as what it covers. For example, she doesn't indulge the haters, giving a complete swerve to that daft, ubiquitous, corrosive series of online and social media rumours about her husband Clarke. Her story is not a platform to even scores – not many of them, anyway. The book is clearly for an audience extending beyond these shores, so the detail of domestic politics is relatively sparse. Don Brash, on the other side of politics, is harshly dismissed, and David Cunliffe, on her own, qualifies for the strongest and most detailed dressing down. Ardern plainly has no time for the man who famously declared he was sorry for being a man. There's a tantalising window into Labour's caucus room after Cunliffe's historic defeat in 2014. 'By convention what is said in a caucus room stays in the caucus room, and it's a convention I will always follow,' she writes, nobly but disappointingly limiting herself to describing and paraphrasing tears and anger, fury and despair. Ardern the party leader won two elections from two. In A Different Kind of Power, it's not exactly 'losers get off the stage', but her book describes John Key, the Prime Minister for the first eight years of her time in Parliament in a perfunctory paragraph. It gives his successor Bill English part of one line and a mention about the campaign debates, and ignores her 2020 opponent Judith Collins entirely. The yawning question That year, 2020, and the epoch-defining Covid deaths and lockdowns that followed into 2021, are peculiarly consigned to very late in the book, taking their chronological place from 280 pages in. For the haters who will want to pore over her justifications for the pandemic policies and their grievances, the book will disappoint. Ardern threads accounts of Level 3 crisis decisions at the Beehive alongside home bubble experiences with husband Clarke, daughter Neve and mum Laurel. These brief, fascinating two chapters on the Covid years give a glancing view into a Beehive in the time of crisis. 'It's rare that you can draw a direct line between a politician's decision and whether someone lived or died,' Ardern writes. 'But this seemed to be one of them.' Fitting the minimalist recounting of the Covid days, Sir Ashley Bloomfield rates a one-sentence cameo. Ardern reflects on the later parliamentary protest not so much as a personal or political condemnation as being a systemic lesson: 'Whatever had brought the protesters to Parliament, by the end, it was clear that is was a place and institution they didn't believe in anymore.' Years on, the ex-PM who is now a world away at Harvard, asks herself the yawning question. Does she have regrets about the Covid decisions and years? 'Yes, I think about regret,' she writes, but 'that word regret contains so much certainty. Regret says you know precisely what you would have done differently … We don't get to see the counterfactual, the outcome of the decisions we didn't make. The lives that might have been lost. One thing I am certain of is that I would want things to have been different. I would want a world where we saved lives and we brought everyone with us. Perhaps that is the difference between regret and remorse.' Or the difference between the perfect and the optimal. Resignation and new life If the book's Covid-era brevity seems a little short-changing, it is likely deliberate. After all, A Different Kind of Power is about being able to rise, in spite of your doubts or fears, to the occasion of running the country or handling a crisis – not about the detail of actually running the country or the crisis itself. Its difference is in viewing empathy and kindness, hugs, tears and compassion as political virtues in a world that judges them vices. Ardern is astonished when a social media poster at the time of the Whakaari White island disaster claimed she went to Whakatāne just so she could be photographed hugging people. And that makes her even more determined. 'The post bothered me more than I wanted to admit,' she writes, and then tells of meeting a female ambulance officer who'd helped on the day, the woman hugging her, with the cameras clicking. 'I knew this would only feed my critics, the ones who were cynical about empathy, who thought that everything was somehow a show. That's fine, I thought as I hugged her tight in return. I would rather be criticised than stop being human.' She outlines in the final brief chapters how that criticism, the cynicism, the always-on-alert responsibility of her job, helped convince her to resign. There's the story of a mystery woman sidling up to her at an airport bathroom, pressing in and hissing 'Thank you for ruining the country'. There's Ardern's fear upon being told she needed a scan for a lump in her breast and wondering 'perhaps I could leave' office, a feeling that didn't leave her despite the risk of cancer being ruled out. There are two instances of snapping at or about people – calling David Seymour an arrogant prick and pushing hard against a journalist for asking a sexist question at a press conference with the Finnish PM. And there's Ardern suggesting to her chief of staff that she worried, in 2023 at the start of an election year, she might have become a lightning rod for attack, and could damage Labour's chances of winning and of its policies enduring. And, in that most ordinary of family occurrences, young Neve asks why her mum needs to Work. So. Much. As the book rushes to a close, the announcement of her resignation, the political and public reaction and the accession of Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister to lead Labour forward are largely glossed over. That's a fail, maybe resulting from an American editor scrawling 'who, what, who cares?' in the margins and deleting. There's nothing on The Wedding, and just a mention of moving to Boston, with nothing of the new life. More importantly, also absent are all the issues of political (mis)management beyond Covid – Three Waters, ministerial conduct, law and order failures, stubborn child poverty and emergency housing – that rose up inexorably in Ardern's second term. Remember, Labour burned more political capital in that term – from an outright MMP majority to 27 percent and defeat – than probably any government other than the Fourth Labour Government of 1987-90. But A Different Kind of Power doesn't dwell on the negative or even acknowledge it. Right at the end, Ardern summarises her role-model message to any young woman doubting her right to be in a position or place. Embrace your sensitivity and empathy. 'In fact, all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths.' That might well be true for Ardern, or for an individual. It's not so for a government. A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $59.99) is available in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom has devoted all week to coverage of the book. Monday: experts in the book trade predict it will fly off the shelves. Tuesday: a review by Steve Braunias. Wednesday: a review by Janet Wilson.
1News
4 days ago
- 1News
Combs paid to hide Cassie beating video because he feared career ruin
Soon after viciously attacking his long-time girlfriend Cassie in a hotel hallway, Sean "Diddy" Combs sought out a security guard and predicted accurately that his career would be ruined — his image as the affable, successful "Puff Daddy" destroyed — if video of the beating ever became public. Eddy Garcia, 33, testified Thursday that the hip-hop mogul made the comment repeatedly before giving a brown paper bag stuffed with US$100,000 (NZ$166,700) in cash to the then guard, in order to buy what he hoped was the only copy of surveillance footage of the March 2016 assault. Prosecutors at Combs' sex trafficking trial in Manhattan have made the footage of Combs kicking, beating and dragging Cassie at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles a centrepiece of their federal case against him. They contend it supports the claims of three women, including Cassie, who allege the Bad Boy Records founder sexually and physically abused them over two decades. Prosecutors say Combs' persistent efforts to hush up the episode fit into allegations he used threats and his fortune and fame to get what he wanted. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges. ADVERTISEMENT 'Something like this could ruin him' After the attack, Garcia said, he spoke several times to Combs' chief-of-staff, Kristina Khorram, telling her he couldn't show her the recording but "off the record, it's bad". He said during one phone call she put a "very nervous"-sounding Combs on the phone, who "was just saying he had a little too much to drink" and that, as Garcia surely knows, "with women, one thing leads to another and if this got out it would ruin him". Winter's here, supermarket spying, and TikTok's new feature. (Source: 1News) Garcia added: "He was talking really fast, a lot of stuttering". In the evening, Garcia said, he became nervous and scared when Khorram called him on his cell phone — the number for which he had not provided — and she put Combs on. "He stated that I sounded like a good guy," Garcia testified, adding that Combs again said "something like this could ruin him". ADVERTISEMENT When he told Combs he didn't have access to the server to obtain the video footage, Combs said he believed Garcia could make it happen and that "he would take care of me," which Garcia said he took "to mean financially". Garcia said he checked with his boss and was told he'd sell it to Combs for US$50,000 (NZ$83,300). Sean Diddy Combs, left, stands as his defense attorney, Teny Geragos, gives her opening statement to the jury on the first day of trial in Manhattan federal court. (Source: Associated Press) When he told Combs, he said the music producer "sounded excited". "He referred to me as 'Eddy my angel'," Garcia said, adding that Combs told him: "I knew you could help. I knew you could do it." Within two days of the attack on Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, Garcia gave Combs a storage device containing the footage in exchange for US$100,000 (NZ$166,700) in cash — with Combs feeding bills through a money counter and putting them in a brown paper bag. Garcia signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement, shown in court, that required he pay US$1 million (NZ$1.6 million) if he breached the deal. At the time, he said, he was making US$10.50 (NZ$17.50) an hour working hotel security. ADVERTISEMENT Garcia said he signed a declaration swearing that there was no other copy of the video. He said he signed the papers in an office building with Combs' bodyguard and Khorram present. Garcia said he didn't fully read the documents, explaining that he was nervous and "the goal was to get out of there as soon as possible". After signing, he said, Combs asked him what he planned to do with the money and advised him not to make big purchases. Garcia said he took that to mean he shouldn't do anything that would draw attention. This frame grab taken from hotel security camera video and aired by CNN appears to show Sean "Diddy" Combs attacking singer Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in March 2016. (Source: Associated Press) Garcia said he gave US$50,000 (NZ$83,300) to his boss and US$20,000 (NZ$33,300) to another security officer. He pocketed US$30,000 (NZ$50,000) and used some of it to buy a used car, he said. He used cash and, avoiding a further paper trail, never put the money in the bank, he said. A few weeks later, Garcia said, Combs called him and asked if anyone had inquired about the video. Garcia said no, recounting Combs' ebullient greeting: "Happy Easter. Eddy, my angel. God is good. God put you in my way for a reason." Garcia said he asked Combs if the rapper might have future work for him, and Combs sounded receptive. But Combs never responded to his later inquiries, the witness said. Last year, CNN aired footage of the security video. Another hotel guard has testified he recorded the footage on his phone so he could show it to his wife.
