About me
When I first bought that one month pass to a local yoga studio, I had no idea it would lead me to where I am today. I had wanted to add some stretching and mobility to my fitness routine. It became more than that, the more often I went. I always thought yoga would be “too slow and boring”- but it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I was working out 5-6 days a week. I was “staying busy” with two jobs. And I was filling my weekends with numbing activities and despised slowing down. Slowing down meant I’d have to deal with what I feared the most - my emotions.
Yoga made me realize what I had been craving: nurturing. Nurturing from a wonderful community, but even more important, from myself. Cultivating a relationship with myself that was sustainable was no easy feat. I had spent a lifetime of listening to that voice in my head that told me I was definitely not enough.
I started feeling a connection with my body. I started to hear the inner voice that I had ignored and shut down for so long. And I was able to start letting go of the addictions that had been gripping me for years. Before practicing yoga, I’d had nothing to replace them with, so there’d been a void every time I tried to quit. This time the void filled with something much greater. Feeling this change in myself inspired me to want to become a yoga teacher, so that I could help others do the same.
After teaching for a year, I traveled to Thailand to further my yoga teacher training. It was here I ended my relationship with alcohol, cannabis, and codependency. Being away from home made it easy to make changes. But coming back and being in the same environment brought back a lot of triggers. I knew another big change was coming and needed to happen. So I enrolled in the Life Coaching Certificate Program with Rhodes Wellness College. We learned how to ask powerful questions, and arrive at our own self-awareness. All the answers I was looking for came to the forefront. I thought I’d find the answers in my wise teachers and classmates. I came to realize they were always within me, waiting to surface.
Yoga and life coaching were the two main things that changed my life for the better. And it’s why I use this approach to help others find that same connection with their bodies and themselves.
Like a lot of the people I speak with, I was conditioned to believe my worth came from external forces and factors. There was a huge cognitive dissonance in my actions, because I was living a life to make others happy. For a long time, drugs and alcohol seemed like the only answer to dampen the pain. I realized that any lasting change has to start with an understanding of the self. There had to be a vision of where I want to be versus where I am now, and how to close that gap. It all starts with one small step, one small change, everyday.
I know what addiction feels like. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless and alone. I know what it's like, disconnected from life. And I know what it's like on the other side. How one action every day can make incremental changes that lead to big differences over time. When our minds feel relaxed, and our bodies feel safe, we can slow down enough to hear ourselves. We begin to know what we want, and that we have the power to choose. Once we know we’ve chosen something, once we’re conscious of it, we show up different. And when that happens, as I’ve seen over and over again, anything is possible.
As the Buddhist saying goes,
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
I felt awful for a long time, and getting to the other side of that, I want to help others come out of suffering too. I love the practice, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
The woman behind the curtain
This website would not have been possible without this fantastic bundle of pride and joy, my wonderful, marvellous, astronomically talented sister, Clara. Please visit her on Instagram @greyandvain for commissions and collaborations!