THE sun rises as Gina Macauley conducts a morning yoga class, the light filtering its way into the rooms she can see on her screen.
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A global pandemic has taken yoga practise outside the YogaHara studio and into her students' homes and lives.
And, despite the many challenges teaching online presents, Gina sees the beauty of this moment.
She sees the beauty in her students joining her for a virtual class, sometimes still dressed in pyjamas, with children and pets and partners coming in and out of the frame.
"Yoga doesn't have to be in some pristine, pretty studio where it's all perfect, because that's not life," Gina says.
"Life is not perfect - life is far from it. Life is up and down and crazy and out of control a lot of the time, so how do we practise yoga? How do we do it in that mess?
"Moving from here [in the studio] out into the world has been a really beautiful gift, I think, for people to be able to really and truly practise yoga in their lives."
Gina started practising yoga as many people do - in a studio.
"Actually I did my very first yoga class in this space," the 54-year-old says.
But yoga's effects were most profound when people started bringing it into their lives.
"Yoga isn't a workout - it's not exercise. It's actually something we live and embody, and it should be part of our everyday life," Gina says.
She fell in love with yoga in her 20s, while practising with her first instructor.
When her instructor moved on, Gina's mother - who had introduced her to yoga classes - bought her a book filled with poses.
"I would just practise at home with my mat and my book," Gina says.
She would gravitate towards her mat whenever she was feeling down, "and have no idea why it made me feel so good".
"It was like my little place of refuge, and I knew there was something in that, but I couldn't articulate what that was," Gina says.
"It probably wasn't until I got to yoga teacher training that I began to understand this amazing power in embodying yourself - being in the body and being in stillness and being in silence and moving gently with the breath.
"I think all of that comes from this embodied experience - knowing ourselves more deeply, knowing ourselves more fully."
Pain and stress are among the top reasons why people seek out yoga, in Gina's experience.
She sees her job as a way to empower people to be in charge of their own health and wellbeing.
"In yoga, as a teacher, we should be teaching that person," Gina says.
"We don't teach a pose - we are teaching the people in front of us."
Though the idea of teaching yoga had appealed to her since she first started practising, it was a flyer on a community notice board in a cafe that changed the course of Gina's career.
She had previously been working in IT - a field she says she loved.
The cafe was one she couldn't even name now, in a community she and her husband were visiting while celebrating a family member's birthday.
"My husband sat against this wall of community notices. Right above his head there's this little sign for a yoga retreat in Bali," Gina says.
Before they had even ordered breakfast, Gina had booked into the yoga retreat with a friend.
Most of the other attendees at the retreat were yoga teachers.
"It suddenly dawned on me that I could do that," Gina says.
With her children entering new phases of their own lives, she could commit to doing the teacher training.
"When something's right for you, you feel it in the whole body rather than just thinking it in the mind," Gina says.
Since teaching yoga, she has never looked back.
"It's an amazing connection to people and I really feel that," she says.
Her main job through the pandemic, she felt, has been maintaining community with people.
"And that's been a full time job, I've been working hard at that," Gina says.
Practising yoga has helped her find the strength she needs to support others, as well as dealing with the challenges of running a small business in a sector heavily affected by COVID-19 restrictions.
"The poses that give me comfort - that have always given me comfort - are the beautiful, gentle nourishing poses like savasana and child's pose... mostly because we just don't do that in our lives... in the world. We're so busy," Gina says
"Everything is about achieving something or trying to get to something. We often bring that into our yoga practice, as well.
"Even on those early days when I was curled up on my mat for no reason - or for many reasons, but unknowing - I wouldn't be doing handstands on those days. I would be curled up in child's pose or savasana or some other very nourishing pose with a bolster and a blanket - and I still love those poses today."
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Emma D'Agostino
Covering general news and Bendigo council.
Covering general news and Bendigo council.
