Yoga Masterclasses Darwin & Online 2027 With Chris Lalor: Arthritis, Sleep, Pelvic Floors, Backs, Wisdom, Anxiety

Yoga masterclasses Darwin & online 2027: six afternoons, six everyday problems

Six Sunday arvo yoga masterclasses, Darwin & online, from late December 2026 to April 2027, with Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher and certified Yoga Therapist Chris Lalor. Each one takes a problem lots of us live with, explains what’s going on, and then gives you the yoga and breathwork to do something about it.

New to Iyengar yoga? It’s the style developed by Mr BKS Iyengar. In the 20th century he did more than anyone to set down traditional Indian yoga, through his books and his teaching, and he pioneered the use of props. It’s sometimes called modern classical yoga, and it’s the style we teach at Flametree.

The 2026 studio places sold out in six days. Studio and LIVE online places for 2027 are open now.

The dates, topics and times at a glance

Times for the other states are further down the page.

Which of these sounds like you?

• You put your shoes on sitting down now, because your knees or hips complain.
• You’re awake at 3am, and tired by 3pm.
• You’ve started planning outings around where the toilets are.
• Your back tells you about it after a day in the garden, or a long drive.
• You understand yourself better than you used to, and still do the same old things.
• Small things set you off, and you’re not always sure why.

If you nodded at one or two, you’re in good company. These are some of the most common things people bring to a yoga class. A normal class doesn’t have time to deal with each of them properly. These afternoons do.

How each yoga masterclass works

Each masterclass comes in three parts.

1. A pre-class presentation. A video on the how and why of that day’s topic, to watch in your own time before the day.

2. The class. On the day you go straight into the yoga and breathwork with Chris, putting it all to work. The afternoon finishes with question time.

3. A post-class paper. A detailed, illustrated paper that goes deeper, and sets out the poses and techniques taught in the class, so you can keep doing them at home. Or watch the video you get access to, or both.

Two and a quarter hours. Long enough to set a pose up properly, adjust people, take the questions, and come back to it.

Who is teaching these masterclasses

Chris Lalor is a Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher and certified Yoga Therapist, and on the panels that certify Iyengar teachers.

She has over thirty years of teaching students at every level, and has been teaching live online for six years. So an online masterclass with Chris is not just a studio class with a camera pointed at it. It’s interactive, and highly useful.

Chris also draws on the knowledge of medical doctors who worked closely with Mr Iyengar on yoga for health, including Dr Krishna Raman, Dr Loren Fishman and Dr Timothy McCall, and on Dr JT Shah’s therapeutic yoga.

What happens at each of the six masterclasses

Monday 28 December: Yoga for ARTHRITIS. Easing stiff, achy joints

Stiff, swollen joints? Rest them or move them? The answer is somewhere in between.

A joint that isn’t moved gets stiffer, and a stiff joint often aches more. Iyengar yoga takes each joint gently through its range, with props, so it’s never forced or crushed.

You’ll learn strong standing poses for the muscles around the hips and knees, how to use props to take the strain off a knee, poses that rest tired joints, and the few to go easy on. Everyone gets the version that suits their joints, whether it’s the wear-and-tear kind of arthritis or the kind driven by the immune system.

Trials of yoga for sore knees have found less pain and stiffness. And Mr Iyengar’s own therapeutic classes had a set of poses for arthritis, which Chris will draw on.

A joint that doesn’t move gets stiffer. Movement is what feeds a joint, so yoga moves each one gently, with props.

Sunday 10 January: Yoga for SLEEP AND ENERGY. Rest that actually restores

Lying flat is not the same as resting.

Rest has levels: the body first, then the nerves, then the mind. That’s why you can lie in bed for eight hours and still wake up tired. Good rest is what makes energy, so this is one topic, not two.

You’ll learn supported rest poses, through to a long, soft out-breath to use at 3am, and chest-lifting poses over blankets for the flat afternoons.

Trials have found yoga and mindfulness improved sleep in older adults, and yoga lifted energy. Chris knows this one from the inside too: her own sleep trouble began when her mother died, and yoga is what sorted it.

Lying flat is not the same as resting. Rest has levels, and supported poses reach all three.

Sunday 31 January: Yoga for PELVIC FLOORS. Tight or weak? (For every body)

Everyone has a pelvic floor, whatever their gender. It’s the sling of muscle at the base of the trunk, and almost nobody talks about it. In this masterclass we talk about the muscles, never about anyone in the room.

A good pelvic floor doesn’t just lift. It also lets go. It can be too tight as well as too weak, and it moves with every breath, so slow, full breathing is training in itself. Sitting on your sitting bones, not your tailbone, gives it a good base.

You’ll learn standing poses and hip openers that set the pelvis well, strong legs and a steady trunk, and how to use your pelvic floor as a skill for the whole body.

In a large American trial, 12 weeks of yoga cut leaks by about two thirds, about as much as a good general exercise program. For men, a small trial found yoga helped long-lasting pelvic pain.

Your pelvic floor should lift, and let go. It moves with your breath, so slow, full breathing is training.

Sunday 21 February: Yoga for BACKS. Length before bend

A sore back is often a guarded back. The muscles clamp down to protect it, and the clamping hurts too. Yoga shows the back, slowly, that it’s safe to let go.

The rule is length before bend. You’ll learn strong legs, props used as “extra arms”, a soft out-breath, and the Iyengar resting pose with the calves on a chair. A sciatic back, a stiff back and a stiff upper back each get their own version. In our experience, strong, fast yoga does not help a sore back, so this isn’t that.

Among others, you’ll learn about students like Raj, who spent much of his time in bed with a slipped disc, and now runs two businesses. Chris’s own back pain eased when she started using a belt in forward bends.

A sore back wants length before bend. First length, then the bend, and slowly the back learns it’s safe.

Sunday 14 March: Yoga for WISDOM. What you do next

Insight shows you what’s going on. Wisdom is what you do next.

This is the follow-on to the 2026 Insight masterclass, and you don’t need to have done that one. It works in three steps: quieten the mind, look at what’s there, then change something.

A hard pose is a mirror. The urge to quit, grip, blame or show off on the mat is the same one that turns up in the rest of your life. You’ll learn Patanjali’s three balances (steady effort, looking at yourself, and letting go of results), simple names for stuck patterns so you can put them down, and short practices to keep the habit going.

This one rests mostly on centuries of yoga teaching. Nobody has tested whether yoga makes people wiser… but many have observed yogis as wiser beings. Research does find that the building blocks improve, like handling feelings and stepping back from your thoughts.

Insight shows you. Wisdom is what you do next. A hard pose is a mirror: what you do there, you do in life.

Sunday 18 April: Yoga for ANXIETY, UPSETS AND ANGER. Calm, without a label

Upset about something, and not sure what? This masterclass starts from being upset, not from a label.

Upset lives in the body as well as the head: a tight jaw, a hard upper back, a held breath. A long, soft out-breath tells the body it’s safe. And calming down works better than letting off steam.

You’ll learn twists and forward bends with the head supported, calming breath, and how to put a pause between the feeling and the reaction. Chris first met her own anger in a yoga room, after a class of twists, and watched it pass.

Of all six topics, this one has the strongest research behind it. Yoga, breathing practices and mindfulness have all been found to lower stress and anxiety.

A long out-breath tells your body it’s safe. Calming down beats letting off steam.

Add the 2026 masterclasses for $119 (normally $149)

When you join the 2027 series, you can tick a box at checkout to add the whole 2026 series for $119. On its own it costs $149, so you save $30 on something that already holds four more live afternoons with Chris and a full library. It’s a substantial extra.

Join in time and you can come LIVE online to the last four 2026 masterclasses:

• Sun 8 Nov: quietening the mind, and finding insight
• Sun 15 Nov: bone strength, including neck, shoulders and upper body
• Sun 22 Nov: pranayama and breathwork for contentment
• Sun 6 Dec: yoga for stronger and more flexible hips

And the 2026 masterclass library opens straight away. It already holds the recorded classes, the pre-class presentation videos and Chris’s papers on strength and core, bone strength and the immune system, plus two ebooks written for masterclass members. Everything from the four classes above is added as they happen.

The image shows a small example of the “portal” that you get to access for the current (2026) masterclass, and the new one for 2027.

The 2026 masterclass library, open at the immune system masterclass: the pre-class presentation, then the full class video with Chris. Every masterclass has its own section like this.

Joining online: what it’s actually like

Online isn’t the leftover option. It’s how a growing number of Flametree students prefer to practise, including people who live ten minutes from the door.

• The same session, at the same time, live. Not a video. Chris sees you and corrects you.
• The same pre-class presentation and post-class paper, every session.
• Question time at the end of every afternoon, online students included.
• Ongoing video access in your Flametree video library. Miss an afternoon, watch it later.
• No drive, no parking. You roll out your mat where you are.
• Use your own props, improvise, or use none. Chris explains alternatives for everything.

Flametree has been running live online classes for six years. This isn’t an experiment.

“Flametree Yoga’s range of online yoga classes is exceptional and they are conducted so well that you feel like you are in the studio with the teacher.” – Dee

Start times around Australia

Darwin doesn’t do daylight saving, so some states shift an hour for the last masterclass.

What Flametree masterclass students say

“I attended Flametrees first in a series of masterclasses It was fantastic. The first one was on loading the bones so lots of different weight bearing exercises. Chris makes sure there are doable poses for everyone and all explained well The 2 1/2 hours just flew and am so looking forward to the next one”
– Fiona

“I really enjoyed the masterclass on bone health. Having osteopenia [low bone density] myself, It made me realise how important it is to ‘work’ my bones particularly as I get older. I definitely came away feeling like I had learned some valuable information. The best bit was the 90 mins of supportive practice, thanks Chris. Looking forward to the next one.”
– K

“What an incredible document – thank you so much and looking forward to the next masterclass.”
– Margie, on Chris’s bones paper

“You do it well at Flametree. Three things strike me: intelligent use of props. Precise instructions. An experienced and highly-trained teacher, who is also ‘of an age’ – ie understanding the changing capabilities of the older student.”
– Danny Slater, Adelaide

What’s included in your Darwin & online yoga masterclasses

• Six afternoons of 2¼ hours, in the studio or live online
• A pre-class presentation video before each one, the how and why, to watch in your own time
• The yoga and breathwork on the day, with a Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher and certified Yoga Therapist
• Question time at the end of every afternoon
• A detailed, illustrated post-class paper after every session, with the poses and techniques set out so you can keep practising
• Ongoing video access in your Flametree video library, so an afternoon away doesn’t cost you the session
• All props provided in the studio, and improvised props explained for online
• Additional help from other Flametree teachers, online and in the room
• $239 for all six, about $17.70 an hour of live teaching
• Optional add-on: the 2026 masterclasses for $119 (normally $149), with four live online classes still to come and the whole 2026 library

Why the Iyengar yoga way suits these topics

• Props support you rather than push you, so stiff joints, tired bodies and sore backs can still do the work
• Alternatives provided to suit each person in the room, with further teachers assisting as well
• Precision means you can be told exactly what to do, and feel what changes when you do it
• Teachers train for years rather than weeks, so the adjustments are informed
• Sequencing is built for real bodies, including stiff ones, older ones and ones with a history

No heat, no music, no competing with anyone. Nobody watching what anyone else is doing.

What changes if you come along

By April you’ll have done more than thirteen hours of properly taught practice, with six papers and the videos to go back to. And you’ll have a way to work with your joints, your sleep, your pelvic floor, your back, your habits and your moods.

Or it’ll be April, and the same niggles will still be the same niggles.

That’s genuinely the whole choice.

Questions about our Darwin & online yoga masterclasses 2027

Do I have to come to all six? The series is sold as the whole set. Each afternoon stands on its own, and each one also builds on the last.

Is the pelvic floor masterclass just for women? No. Everyone has a pelvic floor. We talk about the muscles and how they work, never about anyone in the room, and nobody is asked to share anything.

I have arthritis, a sore back or poor sleep. Is this right for me? These masterclasses were made for people with exactly these everyday problems. Everything is adjusted with props, and Chris gives each person the version that suits them. If you’re under a doctor’s care for something, check with them, and feel free to ask us too. Alternatives provided.

What if I’m away for one? You can join that afternoon LIVE online from wherever you are, and there’s ongoing video access in your Flametree video library if you can’t make the time at all.

What’s the online masterclass actually like? Same session, same time, live. You’ll be seen and corrected. You get the same pre-class presentation, post-class paper and question time. To join a session online, you make a reservation in our PunchPass app, and a link to the Zoom class is emailed to you. Reservations here.

Is two and a quarter hours too long for me? The how and why comes to you as a video before the day, so the afternoon is mainly practice, prop-supported, and you can rest whenever you want. It ends with question time, sitting down.

I’ve only been practising six months. Is this too advanced? With six months of yoga behind you, you’ll be fine. All you need is enough practice to know your way around a pose, not to be good at it.

What is the 2026 add-on? Tick the box at checkout and you get the whole 2026 series for $119 instead of $149: the last four 2026 masterclasses LIVE online if you join in time, and the full 2026 library straight away.

Save your place in all six afternoons: choose studio or online, then Add To Cart above.

New to Flametree, or returning to yoga?

Half-price 10-class passes, plus 2 FREE classes, for new and 3-months-lapsed students: beginners here, or non-beginners here.

Flametree bank account details for direct payment if you wish

• BSB 065-901 Acc No. 10464634
• Account: Flametree Yoga Studio

Email [email protected] to tell us you’ve paid this way.