My Yoga Journey

I think for you to understand why I teach yoga and why I practice yoga you need an insight to the journey that brought me to this point today. So here’s the why’s , where’s and how my journey started….

I started practicing Yoga 8 years ago, pregnancy yoga is where I started. I had two little boys at home aged 2 and 8 months old at the time and I was about 3 months pregnant with our little girl. I had no idea what to expect but I knew I needed to find some space and time for me and only me.

It was bliss we moved a little, my aching and tired pregnant body and mind got a rest. I went home floaty and chilled out. I actually had an hour of relaxation and maybe a nap in there too, which back then was so, so rare.

I had our baby girl May 2010. Our family was complete and to be honest I forgot all about Yoga. I was super busy and just weeks after having our baby girl my then fiancé (now my hubs) got diagnosed with Burkitts Lymphoma. We then went on to spend months apart as my love was an inpatient having chemotherapy and I was a single mum affectively. I may touch on this more another time when I feel its right to put it out there…maybe! Oh how I bloody needed yoga and space then, I just didn’t know it.

Fast forward 4 years…my now husband is healthy, my children are growing and thriving, we moved to our forever home, from that little window looking in everything was perfect. However I was falling apart. I couldn’t go into a busy shop without having a panic attack I was anxious constantly!

I didn’t know what to do, the doctors wanted to up my anxiety medication. they classed me as suffering with GAD or said things like you’ve got post traumatic stress (maybe that was true, I don’t know!). Something in the back of my mind though was like “NO!” this isn’t who you are.

I started to practice, I didn’t know what drew me to yoga maybe my hours of research into why I was feeling the way I did. I practiced on a £4.99 Mat and followed YouTube videos in my bedroom everyday. It was probably 18 months later that I’d actually go to a “real yoga class.”

I was rubbish! haha! ( I tell my students off for saying that now, because nobody is rubbish at yoga!!!!) I couldn’t touch my toes at all, I wasn’t strong, or fit I couldn’t stand on my head. A warrior 2 and downward dog had me shaking and my muscles burning. As much as I found the postures challenging I loved it. I loved the space it created for me and only me just the way pregnancy yoga did years earlier. I’d been so hung up on being a Mum and Wife and making sure everyone else around me was ok that I’d forgotten about me.

Finding that space through yoga felt like medicine for me and slowly but surely I came off the medication I was told I needed, I stopped labelling myself and I became me again but an even better version!! It’s quite dramatic but I really believe Yoga saved my life or at least saved me from myself anyway.

I got stronger mentally and physically and I even started to notice physical changes in myself, I could touch my toes and I finally stopped wanting to throw something at my teachers who said downward dog is a resting posture haha…I got it!

My journey continues every single day. I still have personal struggles, we all have that ego that creeps up and tells us we can be better, do better! I have just learnt how to shut that voice down a little quicker. I practice and it’s sacred to me.

I now teach yoga, I hope that those who attend my classes go away feeling that I have helped them create that little bit of space.

Its not just a fad, I don’t teach because its fashionable, I started to teach because I want people to know that we can create our own light in moments of darkness and be our own best friends.

Invest in you!

Namaste,

Em xx