About Me

I came to yoga while working in a stressful city job. Yoga helped me relax and work through computer related back problems. Later I started to experience yoga as a way of clearing the bodymind of the debris of life. Yoga is great for physical well-being as well as anxiety, stress management, depression, decision making and creative blocks.

My teaching style is relaxed. I encourage students to develop their own relationship with yoga rather than present them with a formula they are required to copy. The emphasis of my classes is on the body/mind connection rather than flexibility, because flexibility is a side effect of yoga rather than its main objective.

My thinking and personal philosophy are a fusion of Western and Eastern self-development approaches. This includes a study of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, yoga teacher training and an MSc in therapeutic counselling.

In the remainder of this piece I share more detailed information about my yoga journey.

My first practice was Ashtanga Vinyasa. One of the great lessons I learnt from this practice is discipline. Pattabhi Jois’s most famous quotes is “practice, practice, all is coming”. This ethos is deeply embedded into the Ashtanga Vinyasa Mysore practice. One gets up early in the morning and takes a practice. I no longer practice Ashtanga Vinyasa but I do get up early in the morning to take a practice (much better than taking pills).

In 2003 I travelled to Mysore to study Ashtanga Vinyasa at the source. Ironically, the trip to Mysore marked the beginning of a transition to a quieter, softer practice. After a short period at the main Ashtanga shala the focus of my five month visit became studying Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with Acharya Hemma.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is a unique self-development guide. On the one hand it draws a very clear outline of the self-development journey. On the other it leaves a lot of space for individual colouring in. With Acharya Hemma’s clear and patient guidance I developed a life-time passion for this wonderful text.

On my return from India I decided to do a yoga teacher’s training course. After a long search I came to the conclusion that the only course that appealed to me was the Integrative Yoga Therapy teacher training course – a yoga school I had never heard of and knew nothing about. It was a complete leap of faith. I am so glad I took that jump. As suggested in the name Joseph and Lilian Le Page (the teachers behind the name), teach an approach to yoga that integrates life on and off the mat. Their teaching places an emphasis on the importance of stress reduction and bodymind integration.

The various courses I took during 2003/4 created an interest in emotional well-being. This led me to a basic counselling skills course. Through the reading I realised there was a huge overlap between Western and Eastern approaches that explored self-actualisation. I also realised that I felt much more comfortable with Western secular approaches to self-development. Therefore, I decided to continue studying counselling, and somehow ended up with an MSc in Therapeutic Counselling. The subject of my dissertation was an exploration of the possibility of incorporating a yoga practice into integrative counselling relationships. Following this small research project I realised – what I already knew – that bodymind awareness is the way and the answer.

At the time of writing I am a yoga practitioner and yoga teacher (it took a little while to gather the courage to stop working as a counsellor after all the effort that went into receiving this qualification.) The focus of my practice is on increased awareness through posture, mudra, yoga nidra and meditation practices. I am studying Sanskrit so that I can read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in the language it was written in, and am slowly exploring Insight Meditation.