JanitaDoelken

Janita Doelken teaches with her hands as much as with her words. Across years and continents, she has gathered different practices and woven them into a single, touch-infused way of teaching. Increasingly, deliberately, that practice has come to rest in one place: Yin.

Today Janita teaches at Grass Roots Yoga, St Kilda, and Within, the South Yarra studio she also manages, alongside private classes, workshops, retreats and a Yin Yoga teacher training course she co-leads. But the range she draws on has taken years of exploration, learning and lived experience to gather.

Coming to the mat

Yoga began as a counterweight to running and other sports. An injury led her to discover yoga as the only movement that felt accessible while healing. She met the practice with resistance at first, but quickly began to realise that it held a depth she hadn't expected.

She began practising more regularly, eventually making it part of her daily life.

For a while, yoga remained primarily physical, "the asana was what brought me to the mat," a grounding practice that stayed with her through years of corporate work, an occupation she "didn't really feel at home in."

It was teacher training, undertaken to deepen her own understanding of yoga rather than to teach, that changed what the practice meant to her.

"I realised it wasn't only benefiting my body. It was creating space within me for a deeper connection that helped me see myself with more honesty, kindness and love."

The touch

Over the years, Janita explored different healing modalities. One that left a lasting mark was ZenThai Shiatsu, a practice woven from Thai massage, osteopathy and shiatsu, grounded in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Like Yin, ZenThai works from the inner yin lines outward towards the yang, addressing the body.

"It's not just hands on a body. It's really tuning into their energy and individual anatomy, how they move, how they respond. Almost like a dance."

That awareness is what she brings into her classes now, paired with touch as its own language.

"It's not about correcting a shape, not at all. It's about enhancing the student's experience," offered gently, never breaking the stillness of the practice.

Into Yin

She still teaches dynamic practices and loves them. But her focus has settled, unmistakably, into Yin.

"Yin is my thing," she says, not something she anticipated, but something she continues to choose because she sees the need.

"So many people don't even know how much they'd benefit from it."

Yin is where she feels she can meet a student fully: helping them ground, soften and truly let go, even if it is only for the hour they spend in class.

After teaching Yin for a couple of years, she wanted to explore how she could share it more deeply. She was offered a space at Grass Roots Yoga and invited her friend and teaching partner Alessia to create something together. Together, they built The Yin Path teacher training.

"It's a path, an ongoing practice. You may step off it for a moment, but you can find it again."

Their next training runs this August. Working together feels natural, she says.

"We each bring different strengths to the table, and we're able to back and support each other in the areas where one of us may be less confident."

Coming home

Ask Jani what grounds her and the answer is immediate: nature.

"Probably my number one value in life is to be out in nature, and just breathe the fresh air."

She's wary of how the city pulls us under.

"We get lost in the busyness, nature is really what grounds us."

When meditating, she often looks for that connection first, a glance out the window towards the trees or sky before closing her eyes.

"We look for it. We need it, a beautiful, simple way to connect with what's within us."

Yoga itself has become a kind of home. Not originally from Australia and a born traveller, Janita found something deeply portable in the practice:

"You roll out the mat and practise wherever you are, that constant companion that helps you come home to yourself."

She reflects on how yoga has shaped her beyond the studio.

"I am a much calmer and more compassionate version of myself. A more patient and, more importantly, present mother."

She sees that same transformation in the students who keep returning.

"We all say these things, patience, presence, compassion. But there's really something to this practice that reveals magic, and I can feel it."

It's the same instinct, in the end, that transformed an injury and a period of forced stillness into a lifelong calling: a belief that the body already knows the way back, and that attentive hands, compassionate presence and moments of stillness can help it remember.