Welcome and thank you for stopping by! We are Honza and Claudine, the founders of YogaBeyond®, a global brand built on the practice of yoga, education and community. The unfolding of our path began from opposite corners of the world. True to our life philosophy, overcoming 10,000 miles between two continents was simply an opportunity for an exciting adventure toward finding each other. We finally met in New York in 2007, and shortly thereafter decided to call Sydney, Australia, our home away from home. Our collective experiences and combined career paths in yoga, meditation, wellness, art, education, trading, business and entrepreneurship have brought us together in a powerful way... et voila, YogaBeyond was born.
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The first chapter of YogaBeyond began in 2012 when our love for yoga and community, lead us to the creation of ACROVINYASA™ a playful and highly transformative practice that takes yoga from earth to air. Uniting elements of vinyasa, acroyoga and inversion training, this community based yoga stream offers a dynamic expansion beyond the traditional solo practice. After a successful launch of our immersive 100hr teacher trainings, we have certified over 250 teachers from 35 countries representing ACROVINYASA™ at yoga studios, festivals and online platforms all over the world.
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Chapter two of our evolution lead us to the opening of YB yoga studio in the heart of Sydney in 2013. After three wonderful years of sharing our practice and nurturing a local community, we were offered an opportunity to co-create a new paradigm of large scale yoga festivals called Wanderlust. It meant saying good bye to our Sydney yoga studio and embarking on a whole new global adventure. We are proud to have invested our heart and soul into an idea that ended up bringing tens of thousands of likeminded people together, transforming countless lives, and spreading the message of yoga on a global scale.
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Our intention to spread the message of yoga far beyond the existing yoga communities, led us to finding our voice within the world of social media. With daily inspirational posts of our life and practice on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, we began to attract a worldwide audience that quickly grew into hundreds of thousands. That eventually lead us to forming partnerships with online platforms YogaGlo and AloMoves that were instrumental in helping us bring our teachings and practice into people's living rooms in every corner of the world. We feel immensely grateful to have found a cosy home in both the physical and virtual worlds.
The next chapter sprung forth from our joint desire to provide a high standard of education for both established and aspiring yoga teachers. From 2015 onwards, we began to channel most of our focus and energy into residential style teacher trainings. These immersive trainings range from 100 to 300 contact hours, offering both RYT-200 as well as advanced RYT-500 Yoga Alliance registered certifications. Stepping into the role of teachers' teacher with the intention of sharing the very best of our knowledge, practice and experience has been a deeply transformational journey and we remain fully committed to the continued expansion and depth of our teacher training offerings.
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The next big paradigm shift came in October 2016 when we welcomed our first daughter into the world. With most of our time spent on the road, we were now a travelling family. Learning how to make it all work and continue to thrive has been an incredible learning experience. As we continued to share our life philosophy with the world through daily posts on social media, we came to realize that our voice was creating positive changes in many people's lives and reaching far beyond just the yoga community. We decided to use our voice not only as a window into our life, but also to shine light on people and organizations that are doing incredible things in helping solve the many challenges facing humanity today. In 2018, we launched our YouTube channel featuring a documentary style videos series called #JourneyBeyond with the intention of bringing more awareness to important issues.
So, what is the next chapter of our evolution? As we continue to grow in our roles as partners, parents and teachers, we continue to seek the fulfilment of our purpose by asking the question: "How can we be of service to the greater Whole?" Meeting thousands of people from many cultures and walks of life, we've found that most have only glimpsed the essential quality of being -- an embodiment of purpose and fulfilment, free from the suffering of our limited beliefs. We all long to live from that level of awareness, but most don't know how.
Humanity has made rapid technological progress in recent times, and yet much of our behaviour and thinking operates as if we were still living in primitive times, overly stressed, confused and insecure. It seems obvious that if we're to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century, we must consciously participate in evolving and upgrading ourselves. That is why we have decided to offer a path of Life Coaching and personally work with anyone committed to self development who is willing to dedicate themselves to finding clarity and purpose in their life -- for curious explorers seeking spiritual growth without having to check their critical reasoning at the door.
We can all learn how to meditate, de-stress and intentionally shift into awake awareness in order to grow into the next stage of our human development. We are very fortunate that many ancient wisdom traditions and their time-tested teachings have been preserved. The purpose of our work as teachers and mentors is to share this ancient knowledge in a simple and accessible way through all of our offerings. Put it simply, we are dedicated to serving as guides into the true nature of why we're all here. Although "awakening" may be beyond precise description, living from awake awareness is a palpable experience and therefore learnable and teachable to those who are ready. The result of this process is the discovery of a deeper sense of connection, purpose and awareness in all parts of your life. We look forward to connecting, sharing and growing with you. Thank you for stopping by!
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With love from earth to air,
Honza & Claudine Lafond
Honza Lafond - Director/Co-Founder
An adventurer and a spiritual truth seeker, Honza has long sought to answer some of the deepest existential questions of the human condition. Over the last 40 years, his journey has taken him from humble beginnings in the Czech Republic, where he was born and grew up, right across the globe to Australia, where he now lives with his wife and three daughters. Honza has explored a number of different paths throughout his professional life, working as a successful artist, stock trader, real estate investor, life coach, personal trainer, and over the last 15 years as a yoga and meditation teacher. His passion for entrepreneurship driven by the pursuit of creative ideas has been instrumental in creating a string of successful ventures, partnerships and corporate sponsorships. Since the founding of YogaBeyond® with his wife Claudine in 2012, Honza has taught countless of people how to wake up to their highest potential at workshops, retreats, trainings, festivals, online classes and private coaching sessions.
At age 19, Honza became interested in the practice of meditation and deep inquiry, which sparked his quest for the ultimate truth about the nature of consciousness. Over the last two decades, he has studied with enlightened masters from various schools in both the western and eastern wisdom traditions, yet his teaching is intuitive and free of any dogma or ideology. As a life coach and meditation teacher, Honza's mission is to help people access awake awareness as the next natural stage of human development. He offers immersive educational courses as well as private Coaching sessions for anyone committed to self development who is willing to dedicate themselves to finding clarity and purpose without having to check their critical reasoning at the door. His approach to personal guidance incorporates techniques from Vedic, Buddhist and Zen traditions, which echoes throughout his teachings in the form of an invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize that what we're ultimately seeking is already here and now.
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Honza and his wife Claudine founded their brand YogaBeyond® in 2012 and became globally known as the creators of an athletic, acrobatic and highly transformative stream of yoga called ACROVINYASA™
Claudine Lafond - Co-Founder
Claudine believes that anything is possible. Her personal mission in life is to live a life of purpose, fuelled by love, truth and courage. She has been drawn to movement and self expression for as long as she can remember. Claudine embodies compassion, warmth and kindness in all that she does. She celebrates in the unique light and beauty within everyone’s being. Her essential nature reflects lightness infused with depth and honesty. Her intention is to create an inclusive environment where students can move freely, feel good, have fun and experience the infinitude of possibilities within themselves. As she likes to say, "in every breath, there is opportunity for transformation. Yoga isn’t a practice contained to a mat, nor is it a practice available only to a certain group of people. It is a powerful tool for transformation and healing and should be available to everybody in the world."
Yoga found Claudine at the age of 16 in her hometown of New York City and the practice immediately resonated. Since then, she has sought every opportunity to learn from teachers around the world within various lineages. Her teaching is influenced by Kripalu, Anusara, Iyengar, Forrest, Hatha, Vinyasa and AcroYoga as well as fitness, pilates and holistic health. She believes that above all, humor is an essential ingredient in life and that laughter is the best core exercise there is. Claudine's humble guidance points her students towards the wisdom and strength they already possess. Holding deep gratitude for all of her teachers and students, she humbly acknowledges that we are all lifelong students. Her vibrant approach to life, courageous spirit, and open heart is infectious. As a mother of three daughters, Claudine's desire to guide women and children has led her to study early childhood education and the offering of her private Coaching practice. Claudine contributes regularly to Women's Health magazine as a wellness expert and has been featured in wellness publications around the world.
Claudine and her husband Honza founded their brand YogaBeyond® in 2012 and became globally known as the creators of an athletic, acrobatic and highly transformative stream of yoga called ACROVINYASA™
Our logo with the letters YB is made up of 7 circles using the so called "Golden Ratio". As with Phi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), the digits go on and on, theoretically into infinity. Phi is usually rounded off to 1.618. This number has been discovered and rediscovered many times, which is why it has so many names — the Golden Mean, the Golden Section, the Divine Proportion etc.
Civilizations as far back and as far apart as the Ancient Egyptians, the Mayans, as well as the Greeks discovered the Golden Ratio and incorporated it into their own art, architecture, and designs. They discovered that the Golden Ratio seems to be Nature's perfect number. For some reason, it just seems to appeal to our natural instincts.
From architecture to art, music, human bodies, animals, plants and even the solar systems, there is nowhere the Golden Ratio cannot be found. Its widespread existence is astonishing. Whether ancient Greeks were unconsciously influenced by the presence of the Golden Ratio in their natural surroundings first and were led to develop toward that proportion, or whether they discovered its beauty first and then chose to model after it we will never know. In reality, we can not deny the greatness of the Golden Ratio, which has been carried on around the universe since the beginning of time and beyond.
