Canadian Pamela Butler moved from the hectic, packed streets of Hong Kong to the peace and quiet of a country cottage in Ballin Temple, Tullow. She was a city girl through and through having been born and bred in Quebec before working in the corporate sector in Asia. 'Hong Kong was a pretty crazy place to live,' she laughs. 'But for me, it was a spectacular time, it was great to be there during the 90's.'

The move to Tullow in '99 could be described as seismic for Pamela who was used to noise, people, traffic and all the trappings that come from living in one of the world's greatest, fastest metropolis.

She coped with the change through practicing yoga, a discipline that she's now qualified to teach.

'Yoga definitely helped me to get used to living in Ballin Temple,' Pamela explains. ' Moving here was a big shift for me because I had lived in cities before this and had never lived in the country at all. There was a lot of adjustments to be made so it was great that I had yoga. It gives you consistency in your life.

She originally came to yoga about 15 years ago after a friend of hers introduced her to it in Hong Kong.

And even though she was surrounded by Asian culture, Pamela says that it was the yoga itself that caught, and kept, her interest in it.

'When I was younger, I had participated in competitive sports such as figure skating and basketball,' she recalls. ' But what attracted me to yoga is that it's not competitive, there are no score cards or tests. It's as physically demanding as you want it to be, without the competition.'

Pamela explains that yoga works through how the person controls their breathing. When a person gets angry or passionate, for example, breathing speeds up. Conversely, you can control how you feel by controlling breath. The advice of taking ten breaths when you're angry, then, is a truism.

While many of us would be familiar with the sinewy bod of Madonna, who practices an extreme form of the discipline, Pamela laughs at the idea that yoga needs to be like that.

'The idea of extreme physical demands being put on your body isn't really what yoga is about,' she points out. 'You don't focus on the body alone. A lot of people do it for toning and stretching but those who stay with it realize the overall benefits of it, beyond the physical.'

'When you practice yoga, you think about how your body feels through the whole process,' she continues.

She says that 'entire books have been written on the benefits of yoga,' from body through to mind and spirit.

Not only does the body's entire systems get massaged and worked over, when you're that in tune with your body, the mind follows suit.

'Once you start to gain self awareness of your body, you become aware of what's important in your life,' she explains. 'You're able to move away from materialism and appreciate what's around you. It's the beginning of a spiritual evolution. An extreme example is Buddhist monks, who have come to realise that they don't need so much, materially.'

Apart from living in a beautiful part of County Carlow, where their cottage is surrounded by mature woodlands and a river can be heard as it rushes along with its business, Pamela is also a full-time mother with four children.

While her children are aware of yoga, Pamela has only gently introduced certain aspects of it into their lives. Instead, she now helps Anne Rennick of Carlow Gynmastic Club every week.

'There's a cross over between the two,' she says. 'The tumbling, stretching, rolling and balancing in gymnastics is similar to what they do in a yoga class and it's excellent for children to do that activity.'

She also teaches yoga in Tullow on a twice weekly basis, in Mount Wolseley and in Teach Brid. Since her move here in 1999, interest in the discipline has increased and, of course, January is a time as people get their lives, (and bodies!) back from the excesses of the previous month.

For the Canadian born, former banker and now the country living mother of four, yoga is with her 12 months of the year.

Because, as she says herself, 'it's all about mind space.'

For further information about Pamela's lessons, contact (059)9155037 or log onto www.ballintemple.com.

- Elizabeth LEE