John Sinclair

John has been practicing yoga for 25 years, and teaching it for 10 years. He initially trained at Hot Yoga Wellington, after turning 50 and seeking to move on from a long career in government and policy consulting, and taught there before moving to Auckland and teaching at what has now become Mahi Yoga. 

Since 2013 he has also taught yoga in Auckland prisons, and he chairs the Yoga Education in Prisons Trust, a network of teachers who run yoga and meditation in programmes within the prison system.  

John has trained in trauma-informed yoga teaching and in using yoga to address challenges to mental wellbeing, such as stress and anxiety. In 2018 he worked on the Commission of Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction, and advocates for the use of mind and body practices as part of therapeutic treatment.

At Mahi, John teaches both hatha yoga and meditation and peppers his teaching with quotes from the world’s great poets and wisdom traditions which, he says, encourage radical acceptance and compassionate self-reflection as the ground for growth and healing.

Quoting TS Eliot, “Old men ought to be explorers”, he describes becoming the owner of Mahi Yoga as both an enormous privilege and a great leap into the unknown.