Teachers

Amelia Disspain

Director and senior yoga teacher at Yoga Bellingen

Co founder of Balanced Practice Yoga Teacher Training and Retreats Yoga Australia Senior Member, Yoga Alliance International Expert registered teacher 1500+

Amelia Disspain is a highly respected yoga teacher with over two decades of dedicated practice and teaching experience. She is the founder and director of Yoga Bellingen and co-founder of Balanced Practice Yoga, a training and mentoring platform for teachers and committed practitioners.

With a strong foundation in traditional Hatha Yoga, Amelia’s teaching is deeply informed by modern physiotherapy, anatomy, and functional movement science. In 2006, she undertook an intensive apprenticeship with renowned physiotherapists and yoga educators Simon Borg-Olivier and Bianca Machliss, co-founders of Yoga Synergy. This formative experience shaped her intelligent, therapeutic, and deeply embodied approach to yoga.

Amelia’s classes are fluid, grounded, and thoughtful—emphasizing breath, energetic awareness, and safe, functional movement. She supports students to develop strength, flexibility, and nervous system regulation while cultivating deeper internal connection through breath and meditative practices.

Recognised as a Senior Member of Yoga Australia and an Expert Teacher with Yoga Alliance International, Amelia has taught a wide range of students, from beginners to advanced practitioners, and has led numerous teacher trainings, retreats, and workshops across Australia and abroad.

Her work is driven by a love of learning, a deep respect for tradition, and a passion for helping others explore yoga as a lifelong, sustainable, and transformational practice..

Jo Cunningham

I have been practicing Yoga for more than twenty years. Yoga is the vehicle I use to find, develop and maintain strength and harmony in all aspects of my life. I have travelled extensively, studying and teaching Yoga classes, workshops and retreats around the world.
I am a devotee of the Divine Mother. She has nurtured and expanded my Yoga practice, given me clarity and insight into myself and the world around me. Fostering my love of Nature and appreciation for the gift of this life.  For the last twelve years I have been blessed to receive the generous teachings and guidance of Master Yogi Clive Sheridan. I continue to be inspired by and live deeply the philosophies and practices of Tantra and Advaita.

I endeavour to bring a shift in consciousness to each Yoga class, challenging students to stay alert and present with the body and breath through each posture (and the spaces in between). With attention Truth is revealed and with Grace illusion dissolves and drops away, both on and off the mat.

Jemima Wright

Jemima is a dedicated household practitioner of Yoga. Her commitment and dedication shine through her dynamic teachings and deep understanding of the physical body and movement, encouraging students to explore, question, challenge and develop a personal relationship with themselves that goes much beyond the outer physical sense of self and steps into the more subtle layers of our being.

First being introduced to yoga through the Jivamukti yoga Method, completing the Jivamukti yoga teacher training in New York in 2014 under the guidance of the Jivamukti yoga founders David Life and Sharon Gannon. She then completed the 800hr Jivamukti yoga apprenticeship with mentor Sandy King at Jivamukti yoga Sydney, and in 2017 was blessed to receive Advanced certification.

Curiosity drew Jemima towards Ashtanga yoga, with many years of committed practice she has learned both primary and intermediate series (forever grateful to the many teachers that have guided her on this path) Jemima is also currently enrolled in Yogic studies, furthering her knowledge on ancient yogic texts, yogic history, and Sanskrit.

For Jemima, A yogic practice is ever-changing, just like life. We need to be able to be fluid, to be able to adapt and build resilience. For most of us our introduction to yoga is through a physical body, over time, with commitment, it becomes a journey much further inward. Jemima is humbled to be able to teach and share with students her knowledge to support their journey, to help build their courage and to inspire their curiosity.

Nadine O’Mara

A practitioner of yoga for almost 30 years and a senior teacher under Yoga Australia and Yoga Alliance E-RYT 200 RYPT YACEP, Nadine has channelled her passion for yoga toward nurturing pregnant and post natal women and their babies.

While studying and teaching varying styles of yoga on both sides of the world for many years, Nadine gave birth to two girls. The pregnancy yoga she practiced through out both pregnancies taught her how to breath properly for the first time in her life, helped alleviate uncomfortable symptoms of pregnancy and made her feel more in touch with her baby in utero. Both girls were born calmly at home in water and their beautiful births she greatly credits to her yoga practice before and during pregnancy.

“Practicing yoga through out pregnancy gives you a chance to tune in to your baby and your body. It provides you with skills in breathing, movement and relaxation that so become a part of you that when you go into labour you don’t even have to think of what you should be doing for a positive birth, you know it”.

She attended Mother and Baby Yoga classes with her girls religiously and found that not only did they strengthen the bond with her daughters but also created long lasting friendships with other mothers. She believes the classes encouraged the positive relationships her daughters have with their bodies today.

Since moving permanently back to Australia in 2011, Nadine looked to help other women have an experience similar to her own hence she studied under the Birthlight Foundation, She Births® and certified as a doula under DONA. Nadine is Director and Lead Teacher at Bliss Baby Yoga, specialising in Pre and Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training and has had the delight of taking further trainings and workshops with Debra Pascali Bonero (Orgasmic Birth), Robyn Lim (Bumi Sehat Birth Clinic, Bali), Anna Watts (Celebration of Birth), Jane Hardwicke Collings (Ten Moons and Shamanic Women’s Craft) and Rainbow Kids Yoga to name a few. She is a women’s circle facilitator under Woman Within International.

Nadine is passionate about “mothering the mother” and feels so blessed to be a part of family’s lives at this very special time. She believes the practice of yoga during pregnancy is essential for preparing not only the body but the mind for birth, giving the best possible chance for a normal delivery and a positive birth experience for both mother and baby.

Emma Hudson

Yoga has been a part of Emma’s life for 8 years now and it is a practice that she lives in eternal gratitude for. Her journey began when living in London and she would follow along to videos online in her bedroom. This evolved when moving to Australia and beginning classes at the gym and finally coming across Yoga Bellingen where the deeper connection really began. But that is the beauty of yoga, it does not matter where you find the connection, it is an ever evolving practice and that is the essence that she would like to share.

Emma has a love for movement, starting off training as a dancer and finding deep connection to her wellbeing and connection with her body. Using the means of Asana to begin a journey to deeper relationships to spiritual practice seemed an accessible way to take the first steps.

Emma is a primary school teacher and teaching is her passion. She found that the reflective process of sharing a practice with others only helps strengthen your knowledge and understanding, it is a deeply humbling experience. Teaching brings her so much joy and she wishes to share that with others in the ever evolving process that is practice. She is thrilled to have completed her 250hrs with a beautiful community at Balanced Practice Yoga and endeavours to continue her learning.

Nicola Cory

Nicola is a Yoga Teacher who is passionate about sharing the essence of Yoga, not just the asana (postures).

Nicola first felt the pull of Yoga in 1999 at a University campus in Oxford, England. It was after 10 years of personal Ashtanga and Hatha practice that Nicola undertook her first teacher training in 2009, covering 500 hours with John Ogilvie of Byron Yoga School. 

Forever a student of Yoga, Nicola has continued to study with inspiring teachers such as Donna Fahri, Rainbow Kids Yoga and 100hrs Yin training with Mysan Sidbo.

Nicola’s teaching style is light-hearted, inclusive, and always with the intention of lightening the load – physically, mentally, and energetically.