Astra Niedra

Astra Niedra writes about personal growth, relationships and conscious parenting.
Her work shines light on why we behave and feel the way we do and it offers
practical solutions for lasting change.

Astra Niedra is a facilitator and teacher of the consciousness transformation system Voice Dialogue, a technique for gaining greater self-awareness and understanding, and which is used in relationship counselling, psychotherapy, life coaching, communication training, organisational transformation, sports coaching and actors' training. Astra trained in Voice Dialogue with its creators, Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, and has been facilitating and teaching since 1996.

Astra is author of the books The Perfect Relationship and Enlightenment Through Motherhood. She has written articles for magazines and web sites, and she edited the books Absolute Happiness by Michael Domeyko Rowland and Stop Dieting and Lose Weight by Di Harris. For many years she wrote the pre-blog email newsletter Daily Voice Dialogue which has been used in teaching institutions worldwide. She has worked as an editor in health, legal and education publishing, has been Editor of WellBeing magazine, and her most recent project was the project management and editing of the beyondblue Research Summaries 2007-2010 book.

Astra has tertiary qualifications in philosophy and education, and she has also studied meditation and yoga for more than two decades. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and their three children.

Astra's other web site is www.voicedialogue.com

A little-known snippet of green history:

Astra was Editor of WellBeing magazine during the period when it championed the greening of office workspaces and when its Publisher Barbara McGregor did just that with a beautiful old Masonic temple in Sydney which would house the magazine's new offices. The interior was fitted with ergonomic workstations built from renewable timber; the walls were painted in bio paint; the timber floorboards were treated with non-toxic oil; the air-conditioning was replaced with a natural air filtration and cooling system; the natural fibre carpet in the staff relaxation room was laid with non-toxic, non-out-gassing glue; we had various policies for conserving energy and water, and so on. The magazine was subsequently sold to a large publishing house and the premises are now used by another (lucky) organisation.

At the time, now about 20 years ago, the focus was on creating a healthy workspace for staff and using materials that would minimise any negative effect on the environment. I believe the venture (and Barbara McGregor's vision, which also kick-started the boom in the natural therapies industry through her creation of WellBeing and its promotion of that industry) should be acknowledged as a pioneering effort in the greening of workspaces and in the promotion of environmental awareness which is so widespread now.

Follow me on Twitter
 

Connect on Facebook