American-born yoga instructor and ALMA studio founder Danielle Harper brings LA wellness vibes to Hawke's Bay.
American-born yoga instructor and ALMA studio founder Danielle Harper brings LA wellness vibes to Hawke's Bay.
Growing up in Los Angeles with Olympic gymnastics goals, Danielle Harper’s dream-crushing scoliosis diagnosis changed the direction of her life, leading her to fall in love with a Kiwi and move to Hawke’s Bay.
Before creating a new lifestyle for herself in New Zealand, Harper had already had a life full of challenges, achievements and hard work back in America.
As a child and teenager, Harper was dedicated to gymnastics and ballet and performed at a high level, with ambitions of competing in the Olympics.
Trying out for the Olympic team, she was told she had scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine.
At that point Harper’s parents took her to the doctor, who confirmed she did have scoliosis and told her, “A career in gymnastics is not going to be for you.”
Needing to keep moving her body, the American stopped gymnastics but continued with ballet and cheerleading.
Harper explained, “It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s that my back actually started giving me some grief. So it took from my teenagehood to my early 20s for it to really be a problem.”
To relieve some back pain, she started going to yoga classes, which she found helped so much that she wanted to learn more about yoga.
Yogi, Danielle Harper opened up ALMA studio and has been teaching locals her LA style for more than two years now.
Harper did yoga teacher training while attending law school to become a prosecuting attorney.
“I specialised in criminal street gangs, so I was putting criminals away by day and teaching yoga by night,” she said.
While her two passions were completely in contrast, at that point in her life Harper was happy with her work and her health, until her high-profile job in criminal prosecution started putting her life in danger.
“I started receiving death threats, so I decided it was a sign to make a total career change,” she said.
Harper followed her love for yoga and started full-time teaching. However, she didn’t feel “amazingly qualified” with her initial teacher training, which only required 200 hours.
To ensure she could provide the best for her yoga students, she went away. She did Pilates training and more yoga training, where she found gyrotonics, which combines yoga and tai chi swimming and uses machines similar to Pilates.
“Gyrotonics is like the creme de la creme of movement, and I wanted to become a gyro tonics teacher.
“So I went and studied to become one, which took about a few years.”
Still living and teaching in America, Harper was visiting a friend on a very small Island in Nicaragua when she fell in love with a Kiwi.
Out of a small Island of 800 people, Harper and her future husband just happened to run into each other.
“We spent five days together, and that was it; we knew from that moment that that was it,” she said.
From there, the Hawke’s Bay-born man invited Harper to visit him in New Zealand. After a bit of back-and-forth and a long-distance relationship, the American moved to NZ and has been here for six years.
Harper found moving to Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, from Los Angeles “interesting.”
“But it’s not easy, or it’s not similar, it’s, culturally speaking, it’s been a big adjustment.”
She has found her happy medium between the two countries and said living in Hawke’s Bay is “pretty awesome” for many different reasons, including the clean air, the beautiful environment, and the lack of LA traffic.
However, Harper said she needs to go home at least once a year to get her fix of not only her family and friends but the city life, as well as inspiration from other yoga and Pilates teachers with her level of experience.
She added, “When I moved here, there was one Pilates studio, and it did not feel like a wellness sanctuary, and I really wanted to create that.”
To help bring LA to Hawke’s Bay, Harper brought along a close friend and Pilates teacher, Ken Tietjen, who moved halfway across the world to help her open the studio.
Tietjen is now the Pilates director at ALMA, and Harper said that Tietjen moving over “was a big help because my expertise is really more in yoga, and I needed somebody that I knew could oversee the Pilates side.”
The ALMA studio owner wanted people to know that at the studio, they were getting the same quality as they would get in a big city.
Along with the reformer equipment and hot yoga rooms, ALMA also has showering facilities. Harper said sometimes people have limited time to get home, change, shower, and then go back out into the world.
ALMA also has a chill zone, where people can sit and hang out, enjoy organic tea and connect with like-minded people.
As someone who has been in the yoga world for many years and in many countries, Harper understands that gym anxiety is a real thing and wants her studio to be as welcoming as possible.
“At the end of the day, I’m concerned about people being at their optimal health and living their best life.”
From beginners to well-advanced, Harper said there is something for everyone to try. For those who want to try Pilates for the first time, an introduction call teaches how the reformer works and more.
The week before opening, ALMA, Harper was struck down with Covid, and because of that, she didn’t have time to rest and recover.
Harper ended up having long Covid and said “the saga dragged on for 20 months of really horrible symptoms.”
She also struggled mentally during her long Covid, not being able to do everything all at once as she had easily done her whole life.
“Having to come in here (ALMA) and inspire and teach people was quite difficult, I definitely went through a period of depression, which I had never gone through before,” she said.
Harper said she has had a few months of no symptoms and is feeling “100 per cent better.”
She said, “I think that the experience of going through that, as a health and wellness professional, has given me some real insight into what it is to be unhealthy.”
Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of the Hawke’s Bay community papers Hastings Leader and Napier Courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings Leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter with NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: maddisyn.jeffares@nzme.co.nz.
