Where I Found Yoga

The year was 1999. Les Mills was at the height of his popularity. I was at the gym still punishing myself for not having the perfect body and I was debating between a  body combat class and something called body ballance.

I chose the easier option… guilting myself for it but as I moved through the class I discovered a way move that I was good at. I could balance, I was flexible. This felt….different to “exercise”.

Fast forward to 2021, I was living in London and had the Geri Halliwell yoga tape. I longed to have the tiny body she did to show off on the Spanish beaches.

I did Yoga at Holmes place in London where they asked us all to stand on our heads at the start of the class. I pursued yoga with the determination of a masochist. Could I bend and fold my way to lose weight and be happy?

The answer of course was no. You can’t force life to get you what you want. You have to let life come to you.

Yoga and I were in love but I couldn’t stop seeing her as the “bad boy” to chase, to get soemthing from, to conquer.

I dutifully worked in corporate roles and moved back to australia until those jobs squeezed out any enthusiasm for life that I had at the end of the day and I stopped exercising completely.

I had my first child and the opportunity for “me time” and the “escape hatch” to leave the house made yoga sexy again.

I marveled at the return of my flexibility and the blissed out feeling I got in savasana.

When I lost my baby girl in 2010 I had a voice whispering to me that I had one life and wouldn’t teaching yoga be a good way to move through it?

I shut her down again and again, I hated attention on me, I couldn’t speak in public, it wasn’t practical I had little babies.

And yet I sat down with my husband and I told him my dream and his support moved me forward.

Nothing for me feels better than teaching yoga. I don’t plan, or overthink, or second guess the class, the energy of the room drives it for me.

If I had a purpose it would be to teach. Philosophy, meditation, yoga asana, energetics, I love it all.