A YA accredited Senior Yoga Teacher, Morven Hamilton has been practising yoga since 1995 and teaching it since 2008. Her previous experience as a language and music teacher and university lecturer has given her almost two decades of teaching and group facilitation experience. During her time working as a teacher, teacher trainer and group facilitator she has seen yoga radically transform people's lives.

Morven completed 200 hrs of training in Akhanda Yoga with Yogi Vishvketu and Chetana Panwar in the Himalayan town of Rishikesh, India in 2008. She went on to do 500 hour YA certification with Laura Gilmore at Bristol City Yoga in Bristol in 2010 and continues to enhance her teaching and practice with further training. Her specialisms include restorative and therapeutic yoga, yoga and mindfulness, Ayurvedic yoga and philosophy. She is also trained in Kundalini yoga.

Morven's roots are in the Akhanda school of holistic Hatha yoga although she has studied several approaches over the years. She respects and honours the traditions of Hatha yoga whilst leaving room for creativity and self-expression. Her approach is a playful, alignment based method which leads the practitioner to embody the yogic precepts of calm, kindness and wonder.

Motivated by a fascination with yoga's power to heal, she specialised in restorative yoga after doing initial training. This interest led her to yoga therapy and her training in 2010 with Susie Hately, founder of the yogaThrive programme for people on the cancer journey. 

She has worked extensively with people seeking the therapeutic benefits of yoga, including those suffering from anxiety, stress, insomnia and depression, CFS, COPD, cancer and those recovering from injury. 

Yoga for Cancer

In 2011 Morven began her work at Penny Brohn Cancer Care in Bristol, the flagship centre for the UK's leading complementary cancer care organisation. From 2011 to 2016 she worked closely with Penny Brohn clients, running yoga courses for people with cancer and their loved ones.

Beginning by teaching the yogaThrive programme for cancer support, over the years her approach has evolved into a mindful, whole-person approach to yoga for cancer. The fruition of this is the recently developed Yoga for Cancer Teacher Training programme which is a 40 hour intensive course for teachers, related health professionals and students of yoga who wish to work with people living with cancer. 

Mindfulness has played an increasingly important role in her own practice and daily life, and is integral to her teaching style. She has trained on the Breathworks Mindfulness for Health teacher training programme, directed by Vidyamala Burch.

Morven worked as a  course facilitator at Penny Brohn Cancer Care for several years, delivering the Living Well course, a two-day intensive course for people coping with the impact of cancer.

She works on a group and one to one basis with cancer patients and has run retreats and workshops for people with a diagnosis and their loved ones.

Yoga and Mindfulness

Morven is also a student of Mindfulness and has completed teacher training on the Breathworks Mindfulness for Health course. Mindfulness has a presence in all of Morven's teaching and she has developed a Yoga and Mindfulness course which integrates the two disciplines.

Current teaching commitments

She currently teaches as an associate on the Bristol City Yoga and Yogafurie Teacher Training Programmes where she teaches on the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, mindfulness and meditation, yoga and mindfulness and restorative yoga. She runs CPD courses in Ayurvedic yoga, Yoga and mindfulness, Hatha and Philosophy for teachers and serious students of yoga. 

She now teaches classes and workshops in Bristol and Weston Super Mare, and teaches retreats and holidays in the South West of England, Europe and further afield. She is the founder and director of Yoga by Nature  and is committed to offering the teachings of yoga in an inclusive way. She has recently created a teacher training course for those who wish to share yoga and mindfulness with people on the cancer journey. 

Vision

Morven's aim is to share yoga's vital tools for self-empowerment and healing. Her own journey with Yoga began with an intuition that this ancient practice contains the secrets to health, happiness and peace, and she teaches from her own transformational experience. 

Yoga by Nature

Morven is the director of Yoga by Nature, a venture dedicated to providing an affordable, accessible approach to yoga. As well as offering weekly mindful yoga classes in Weston, she collaborates with other teachers and with therapists and chefs to offer weekends of yoga, relaxation, creativity and fun. The retreats are always based on a theme and they offer the opportunity for you to expand your knowledge of yoga and deepen your experience of the practice. Please click here to find out about the next Yoga by Nature retreats. 

Styles

Morven teaches Mindful Hatha, Hatha Flow, Yoga and Mindfulness, Gentle Yoga and Restorative Yoga classes and workshops in Weston Super Mare and Bristol