Who we are

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Arvind first learnt the process of fasting as part of a Post Graduate diploma of Yoga Education he completed in 1986. Having felt the benefits, Arvind fasted each year as part of his own health and well-being practice. Jane became interested in the practice of fasting when she started living with Arvind and was amazed at the outcome. Later they trained as bodywork practitioners and in time started teaching workshops and trainings in yoga and bodywork.

Over time our friends and family as well as our students and guests became interested in fasting and started asking to be helped through the process. It became obvious that it was time to start offering fasting retreats as well as the yoga, bodywork and self-awareness retreats we were offering.

That was nine years ago, and since that time we have continued to study and practice fasting and put together a unique fasting programme that we believe works wonders. Over this time we have facilitated fasting retreat both in New Zealand and in Japan. We have been amazed again and again at the results achieved with such ease, by those who participate in this programme.

Our retreat has been recognised as the first Wellness Retreat in New Zealand to be endorsed as a visitor activity by Tourism New Zealand standards authority, as well as receiving 4 star plus for our accommodation. We are dedicated to sustainable tourism and best practice ethics. We were one of the first businesses in Nelson to gain sustainable certification as part of a join venture between Department of Tourism and Department for the Environment.

I was born in India in 1953, the tenth child of professional parents. In 1975, at the age of 22, my natural curiosity got the better of me and I set out to see the world. I met and married a New Zealander and emigrated to Nelson, in New Zealand.

Here, I established a string of restaurants that began with Nelson’s first pizza shop, Pujji’s Pizzas. At this time, I also celebrated the birth of my children, now both in their late 20s.

When my marriage fell apart, so did I. Having lost my family, home and business, I returned to India to soak up – and remember – the spiritual traditions that are my heritage.

I devoted four years to yoga and spiritual practice before returning to New Zealand to study Hellerwork, a system that combines balancing the body, re-educating movement patterns and body/mind integration I started my private practice in 1990, combining yoga therapy with integrative bodywork. I started teaching yoga and bodywork workshops and trainings in 1992.

People know me as a down-to-Earth woman who is skilled in the healing arts. I’m also a poet and a pretty good business manager. I love being a wife (most of the time) and mother of three. Singing with my local world music choir is one of my delights, as is exploring the glorious countryside that is my home.

I was born in 1959 in Auckland, New Zealand. Following years of ill- health and a near-death asthma attack when I was 29, my marriage finally ended and I began a conscious healing journey that radically changed my life. Fasting has been a major part of the healing of the asthma, which hasn’t been present in my life for 12 years now.

In 1992, I began learning yoga from inspired teacher Arvind Pujji. At this time I also began training in bodywork, massage, Hellerwork and counseling. Arvind and I discovered we were a dynamic and effective team, with complementary talents and skills, and have been teaching together throughout New Zealand and overseas since 1994. We married in 1997, the same year we purchased our current home and the foundations of Pujjis Wellness Retreat was established.

I have been in private practice, offering bodywork and yoga therapy, for the past 13 years, and been teaching with Arvind for the past twelve years.