Lianne has over 30 years of experience teaching and practising yoga. She developed a teacher training course in 2004, the first SomaChi Yoga Teacher Training. By 2007, her school was accredited with the International Body of Yoga Alliance. For the past three years, her training has included 70 hours of intensives in India.

Her unique style encompasses the influences of physical theatre, where she received sponsorship
to study Grotowski and experiential theatre in Europe, and the influences derived from her travels in the east, including Nepal, to study Buddhism. Her classes are described by her students as refreshing and experiential, and the Melbourne Age characterised her style as “fun classes that swoop into trikonasana (triangle pose) in dance-like rolls from the waist and cycles of sun salutations”.

Lianne’s Vinyasa has been influenced by Taoism, Tai Chi, Vajrayana Buddhism and, over the years, the yoga world of Cyndy Lee, Shiva Rae and Wade Imre Morrisette. She has an advanced diploma in Zapchen Somatics (Buddhist and Western body psychotherapy), where her principal teachers are Tony Richardson and Julie Henderson.

For the past 15 years, she has been studying Buddhism with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. Lianne also enjoys and studies within the Shambhala tradition of contemplative meditative practices and is currently entering her sixth year as a student of

Dharma Gar, where she has committed to two hours of meditation practice a day for 10 years.

Lianne now teaches internationally, including India and China. In 2018, she launched teacher training in China and pilgrim retreats to India with her husband, Peter Watts, who has extensive experience teaching Eastern philosophy. 

Over the years Lianne has taught many styles of yoga, improvisational and somatic movement. She has given yoga and somatic instruction at Chunky Moves, Melba Conservatorium of Music, and was a teacher trainer for Somatic Pilates at The Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. She is highly experienced in sequencing classes that directly communicate to her students through sensory applications.

Other ventures have included Yoga and Pilates Workshops in outback Australia. In 2011 she taught sensory applications of functional anatomy to medical students of Melbourne University. Many
of her past students are teaching today around Melbourne in SomaChi and Vinyasa, and some have ventured into their own studios.

Her passion and motivation for yoga stems from traditional Eastern and Western contemporary influences. With utmost respect to her own teachers, Lianne continues to go beneath the structure of asana, asking the question of how you find spontaneity and energy to express these ancient postures, and experience great joy.