As my business grows & evolves, I want to take a moment to acknowledge & appreciate where it all started..
On a Yoga mat (and waay before that, in a classroom)
This year is my 13 year anniversary with Yoga. I’ve been practising for 13 years now - Yoga is a firm fixture in my life and always will be.
This year is also my 17 year anniversary with teaching. I’ve been a teacher ever since I graduated form University. Teaching is a firm fixture in my life and always will be.
Teaching Yoga is one of my greatest joys in this world. And whilst I now do a lot more Coaching & Healing work with people both in a 1:1 private capacity and corporately, Yoga is still at the heart and foundation of all of my work.
It is important to me that this element of my work & business remain accessible to everyone, on every level: locally, community wide, nationally, internationally and online globally.
I started teaching Yoga in 2011 to the students at the college where I worked. It was a humble start to Yoga teaching and whilst I got paid for teaching my A Level subjects in the classroom, in the beginning I was not paid for teaching Yoga classes.
I did it out of love
I did it out of passion
I did it because something inside me knew that I couldn’t NOT teach Yoga
I did it because I am a Yoga teacher
After the first year of me offering Yoga as enrichment to the students (and it being wildly popular!) I was given a contract separate to my A level teaching contract and began to be paid for my work as a Yoga teacher. It felt like a dream.
In 2015 I did my first 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Certificate which enabled me to bring Yoga into the public and start teaching classes in the community. Again, it was humble beginnings! In a school sport’s hall first of all, then in the studio where I had trained and over the years that followed in church halls, libraries, community centres, various workplaces and then regular classes in gyms, hotels and health clubs.
I am lucky to have learned from some of the best teachers in the world. My first teacher back in 2010 was Kirsty Gallagher. She was my teacher & mentor for many years and with her I travelled to France, Ibiza and Sri Lanka for the most divine Yoga Retreats. I have also trained with exceptional teachers in all of my further teacher trainings and will forever be an eternal student of Yoga. For the last 13 years, I have quite literally invested all of my money in learning, mentors, teachers and coaches! Yoga led me to train in (alongside various styles of Yoga: Yin, Nidra, Vinyasa, Hatha) Meditation, Crystal Therapy, Angelic Guidance and more recently in the last few years, Coaching. I was also attuned as Reiki Healer before I even found Yoga but that’s a story for another day.
In the beginning of my Yoga teaching journey, I was teaching Yoga alongside my day job for a long time. And then in 2018 I lost one of my parents to Cancer. It was devastating and I turned to my mat. I kept on practising and I kept on teaching. Even though I was given compassionate leave from the college, I kept on teaching my classes in the community. I kept teaching Yoga because it was my Sanctuary. My time on the mat brought me a whole other level of Peace and healing. It’s this depth of healing that I am able to offer my clients because I’ve lived & breathed it. I know it is available.
I had understood for many years and it was during that time in my life that I felt and was the most supported by my practice. It made me into an especially supportive teacher & coach myself.
Through both my practice and teaching of Yoga I have learned some of the most profound lessons in life. My practice has taught me the embodiment of: Love, Support, Compassion, Determination, Patience, Acceptance, Discipline, Discernment, Kindness, Connection, Togetherness, Harmony, Alignment and Freedom.
My practice has taught me what it truly means to know myself.
My practice has taught me how to truly love myself.
My practice has taught me how to teach & support others.
I can’t ever sufficiently express in words what my practice means to me.
Some people may have the misconception that Yoga is ‘making shapes on a yoga mat’ or ‘sitting in silence or chanting’ and whilst there is an element of truth to both of these misconceptions, they are not Yoga.
Yoga, to me, is connection. The word itself translates from Sanskrit as ‘Unity’ It is bringing you back to yourself (all your layers back into harmony: body, mind, heart, soul), bringing you back together again when you feel like you’ve been pulled apart, bringing you back to your true self.
Yoga is the connection that you have with yourself.
And it is the connection that you have with this world, with this life, with this universe.
When the pandemic happened and all of my classes were taken away from me, I’ll be honest, I struggled. Because teaching my classes was everything to me. I had left my job in the classroom shortly after P died in 2018 and suddenly my business took off. I was teaching a LOT of classes (looking back, I really don’t know how I was doing that energetically!) and it felt amazing.
I was living my dream. Teaching what had changed my life and helping so many people. I was very much in alignment, moreso that I had ever been in my whole life. And so when the world stopped and it was all taken away from me, I panicked.
But I soon found that when you are living in alignment with your truth and you TRUST, things have a way of working out. Sometimes you gotta surrender to it.
I learned how to use Zoom (reluctantly in the beginning!) I couldn’t get my head around:
1 - how you could ever teach Yoga online (I am SO attuned to the energies in the room when I am teaching, I believe it’s how I ‘just know’ what you need) and
2 - why anyone would want to practice with me, using my next door neighbour’s little webcam from my little Yoga room when there are thousands of professional videos of Yoga classes on the internet.
But it turned out that energy travels – even through screens! Your people are your people, your community is your community, and mine stuck by me. And for what felt like a lifetime(!) I taught 5+ classes online every single week throughout the whole pandemic. For the first 12 months, I never asked for any payment (I had lost all my income and was very aware that if others had too, there was no pressure to pay because I knew in my heart the world needed Yoga now more than ever) I just said that classes were ‘by donation’ and if people wanted to contribute a little payment, they could. And those donations were literally the survival of my business. I will never ever forgot the kindness of people, and the commitment! There was never a class where no one came and it honestly gave my life purpose and was all the confirmation I’ll ever need that I am doing what I am on this Earth to do.
Post pandemic, my business looks a little different: lots more private & corporate work AND I still teach public classes. For the foreseeable future, this won’t change. Because my classes are important to me. They feel like nothing else and have the most special place in my heart.
If you’d like to experience Yoga with me in the most affordable & accessible way, here is where you can practice with me (everyone welcome in every class)
- Wednesdays @ The Mercure Georgian House Hotel Bolton | Yoga (I struggle to define it as I respond to the energy in the room and every class is always different!) | 7-8pm | Just £5 to drop in
- Thursdays @ DW Fitness First Wigan | Yin | 11.30-12.30 | Members only
- Fridays @ David Lloyd Chorley | Yin | 6.15-7pm | Members Only
- Sundays @ David Lloyd Chorley | Sunday Yoga | 10.15-11 & 11.15-12 | Members only
The last Sunday of each month @ Chakra Wellbeing Studio Penwortham | Yin | 6.30-7.45pm | Just £11 to drop in
- Sundays @ Chakra Wellbeing Studio | Yoga for Sport – 6 week course | 5-6pm | £60 for the course, next one begins 4th June
In person events – next one Sunday 21st May Sunday Sanctuary + Spa @ The Mercure Georgian House Hotel Bolton, 12-4pm just £69 (+only £5 extra for unlimited use of the spa afterwards)
And if you can’t make it to an in person class, I’ve got you!
Find hundreds of classes in my online library and enjoy some freebies from me too.
To everyone who has walked with me on this path, I am beyond grateful.
Thank goodness for Yoga.
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