Words: Jess Coombes
Twelve yoga mats in a box takes up the boot space of my Subaru wagon. Each time I lift the box out of the boot I think “bend your knees, draw your navel to your spine, activate your core”. Friends arrive for their class and take the other end of the box to lighten my load. I prop up the handcrafted wooden sign outside in the sun. “So Yoga” on one side and information about upcoming courses to spark curiosity in passers-by on the other. Some of them spontaneously pop their heads in during the class to see a room of people moving their bodies into different yoga positions. I am at the front guiding their flow from warrior one to downward dog. I walk between them bringing attention back to the breath “inhale to exhale”.
I’ve turned my hobby and passion for yoga into a ‘side hustle’ by sharing and teaching yoga classes and courses in Queenstown. Yoga is the vehicle to go deep by leading movement into balance.
Unquestionably, new and inspiring pathways for happiness and fulfilment are unfolding for many of us after the challenges of the pandemic. We had time to go inward to really see what was happening in our lives and recognise an opportunity for change.
Pursuing your passion
To illustrate the importance of pursuing your passions, bestselling author Gretchen Rubin writes about habits and happiness in her book The Happiness Project. How returning from holiday allows one to see things with new appreciation when we have been away from them. Gretchen pursued a passion project of writing a novel in one month after research told her that making time for your passion and treating it as a real priority brings a great boost in your happiness.
For some, this passion can manifest in the form of a side hustle – a secondary business or job that has the potential to bring in extra income. Moreover, side hustles are offering us an increased sense of happiness and fulfilment by creating something we are passionate about.
In fact, you may have experienced this deep feeling of absorption or peace when you are creating or doing something you really love. That is, you are so engaged in an activity that it feels like nothing else exists but that which you are doing. This is flow state. An ancient concept made popular by Westernised philosophical traditions in the 70’s with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s and Nakamura’s studies in positive psychology.
Fifty years later, popular meditation and mindfulness App Headspace explains “flow state is when you’re giving your fullest attention to an activity or task that you are incredibly passionate about, [and are] singularly focused on”.
Busy bee
In December 2022, mother and businesswoman Carmen Cristescu found her side hustle by chance in Pāpāmoa, Tauranga. She was working as a financial advisor for Westpac bank when lockdown transpired. Carmen had a newborn son and her daughter was only 20 months old. During this time, her husband’s beekeeping business couldn’t export honey due to the restrictions. So, while continuing to work for the bank from home, Carmen started experimenting with the honey by infusing it with flavours like cinnamon and vanilla when the kids were asleep. This led to the creation of Little Hands Honey.
It turned out that the honey was the catalyst which led Carmen to a small market in the industrial gym car park in Ashley Place. Unfortunately this market fizzled out due to its isolated location and the impacts of Covid. A fellow former stallholder then encouraged Carmen to rejuvenate the market initiative as they could see her passion for the markets and community. Unexpectedly, she then discovered Te Manawa ō Pāpāmoa School grounds where the Pāpāmoa Community Markets are now located.
Carmen’s initial inspiration was to create something that would keep her two young children connected with the local community. So she stepped back from her finance career by becoming self-employed as a financial advisor part time to dedicate six months exclusively to the market’s development. Carmen grew Pāpāmoa Community Markets from eight stalls to between 25-30 unique stalls each week. The stalls include Little Hands Honey, The Ginger Beard man, Chitten and Co and Buzzy Cuts, a mobile barber on site.
Remarkably, Carmen now finds herself excited to wake up at 4.30am on Sundays. “Engaging with so many people, observing families enjoying the ambience we’ve nurtured and forging deep relationships have all enriched my life,” she says. “The children not only play and make friends but also show a keen interest in helping out, be it with stallholders or in post-market clean-ups. It’s heartening to witness their involvement.”
Carmen’s passion has only grown stronger since beginning the Pāpāmoa Community Markets as she witnesses their positive impact on the local community. “It’s a place where locals come together, get to know each other and share stories…in simple terms, markets have the power to make communities stronger while also doing business.”
Carmen balances her career in finance alongside operating the Pāpāmoa Community Markets and being a Mum through a variety of practices like Yin Yoga, Taekwondo (Korean martial art) and Yoga Nidra (guided relaxation). Interestingly, it is these practices of Yoga Nidra, meditation, and spending time in nature that all of these wāhine use to strengthen their wellbeing and find balance in ways that help support their side hustles.
In essence, it is about finding ways to channel our passion and purpose so that we can create and re-energise ourselves by doing what we love. The question is: what makes you feel excited to spring out of bed in
the morning?
Riding the wave
Leonie Anholt’s mother tongue is Dutch. As it happens, the word hustle originates from the Dutch word husselen which means “to shake”. She left her family and life in the Netherlands working as a flooring designer to follow her intuition and move to Raglan where she is now based as a surf photographer. Leonie speaks with me via Zoom with a big smile on her face. Undoubtedly because she is in Fiji working on a retreat for 16 days in her dream job capturing wāhine in the surf. Luckily, during this stint in Fiji, Leonie gets 3 of the 16 days off to enjoy the islands and catch some longboard waves herself.
When Leonie began sharing her surf photography in 2020 on Instagram, she recalls “the response was overwhelming. I received so many messages from women all over the world saying that they were looking for something I had found in Whāingaroa (Raglan)”. Leonie instantly fell in love with the small surf town near Hamilton when she visited a friend there and has now lived since 2016. “Raglan represented everything I longed for: community and living in harmony with nature.”
Due to the instant epic response to her work, by 2022 Leonie became self-employed full time in her surf photography business after she bought her digital water housing equipment to keep her camera safe and waterproof. It is ironic that she is from an inland town far from the waves and was not a fan of the ocean, yet, now she finds her passion and hustle in the water.
These days, Leonie is happiest spending most of her time surfing logs (longboards) and capturing images of wāhine surfers in the waves. She also collaborates with other industry professionals to run surf photography workshops and surf retreats in Aotearoa and abroad. Leonie’s passion and vision is bringing like-minded women together “to create a community where women feel safe, supported and empowered to live the life they have always dreamed of”.
Leonie shares how her commitment to wellbeing or hauora has allowed her to transcend limiting beliefs and questions such as “do I deserve this?”. This is often a thought that comes up when she is facing new opportunities in her life. Leonie has become comfortable working through such uncomfortable feelings to follow her “heart’s true desire” and continue growing Surfgirlnz. “To notice thoughts, feelings and shift emotions, I usually use breathing exercises and meditation tracks by people including Dr. Joe Dispenza and Wim Hoff,” she says.
Additionally, Leonie uses float therapy which is floating in lukewarm water with Epsom salts to match your body temperature and create a deep state of relaxation. She also does saunas, ice baths, an energy healing therapy called reiki and practises yin yoga – holding passive stretches for long periods. These tools are vital for Leonie. “Once I get clear on my limiting beliefs and I have shifted through my emotions, I take time to journal and write a new story.”
