Bianca Galizzi from Bikram Yoga & Yin Yoga Glenelg voted SA’s best yogi by you

From cheerleading to yoga, SA’s best yoga instructor has seen it all. Hear why chronic pain forced her to put down the pompoms and pick up the palo santo.

From puffing pom poms to burning palto santo, South Australia’s best yoga instructor has almost lived two lives.

Bianca Galizzi, an instructor at Bikram Yoga & Yin Yoga at Glenelg, has been named the state’s best yogi – but it was purely by chance she even became one in the first place.

Two decades and a lifetime ago, Ms Galizzi never could have predicted where she would end up.

Having run down the players race at AAMI Stadium after a cheerleading performance for the Adelaide Crows for the last time, Ms Galizzi realised her pastime was not helping the chronic pain she was suffering.

Despite being fit and healthy, through combined participation in dancing, cheerleading and netball, she felt her pain indicating she was not “looking after” her body.

Bianca Galizzi performing with the Adelaide Football Club Crows cheerleaders, alongside Kerry Siciliano.

“Even though dancing is stretching, it’s not the same as looking after your body,” she said.

“I was at uni studying psychology and I was having serious back issues because of hyper flexibility.

“That segued into me doing yoga.”

Ms Galizzi has since become a staple of the Adelaide yoga scene having completed her yogi training in 2012.

Since then, she said every step along the way had changed her life and the lives of others around her.

SA's best yogi is Bianca Galizzi from Bikram Yoga & Yin Yoga at Glenelg. Picture: Supplied

Bianca Galizzi. Picture: Supplied

“Most people who do yoga will say it’s changed their life, and it definitely changed mine,” Ms Galizzi said.

“When I did the teaching course it was still more about me, my own personal challenges and transforming my life to being pain free – then I decided that’s what I wanted to do for other people.

“A good friend of mine struggled a lot with anxiety and depression as a teenager and into his 20s then when he was about 27 he got into yoga.

“He says he wishes the psychologists told him to take up yoga instead of taking pills.”

Aside from being the best yogi in SA, she’s also a successful personal trainer and owns and operates Momentum Personal Training while being a mother to her three children under seven.

Ms Galizzi’s yoga expertise encompasses hot pilates, floor pilates, reiki one and two, Isis healing, smartball one and two and exercise for pregnancy.

Her personal training background, which she has honed for 20 years, has expanded her yoga and physical wellbeing insight.