Teaching my first headstand!
I am indebted, first of all, to Audrey Pattison - one of BKS Iyengar’s first students in the UK - for having had the foresight and courage to start a children's Iyengar yoga class in a London state primary school in 1976. As a 6 year old without any conceptual understanding, I simply knew I had found something which helped me feel at home. Yoga became part of my life, and over time the discovery that I could choose where to place my attention - and that this choice influenced how I felt - grew into a curiosity about meditation and the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha).
In my early 20s I spent a year working with the Tibetan community in exile in Dharamsala, India, supporting Tibetan architectural heritage and living amongst Lamas and Rinpoches (senior teachers of Tibetan Buddhism), including the Dalai Lama himself. Their presence, lightness, laughter and friendship was a more profound teaching than any words could be for me at that time. By the end of the year I felt ready to attend a silent 20-day Vipassana meditation retreat in a Thai monastery in Bodhgaya. I came away with a radically new experience of reality, and a taste of freedom I had never known before.
The seeds of this new reality were then watered by life, as I returned to the UK, completed a Masters degree (focusing on the transformative potential of teaching yoga and meditation in schools), completed a two year Iyengar Yoga teacher training, married the boy I had been dating through university, and moved to San Francisco. Arriving in 1997 in a city alive with yoga and meditation was incredibly inspiring. I practised regularly with Judith Lasater (from whom I discovered a love of restorative yoga), Rodney Yee (who gave me permission to include poetry alongside precision) and Sarah Powers (who showed me that it was possible to integrate yoga and meditation). When my first child was born two years later (only weeks after the tragic loss of my brother-in-law) the sense of what truly mattered in life became clear. Love. I gave myself permission to do what I loved, and began teaching yoga full time.
Parenting and practice have always been interwoven for me. During the long and precious period of mothering three young children, it was a joy to explore this meeting place deeply. And so, alongside my regular yoga and meditation classes, I taught pregnancy yoga, postnatal yoga, mindfulness for pregnancy, baby massage and worked as a birth doula . As my children grew, my practice and teaching continued to reflect these changes, and my attention was able to turn towards reparenting myself as well. Sarah and Ty Powers helped me to weave psychological enquiry into my practice, supported also by Martin Aylward (who I had briefly met on that first retreat in Bodh Gaya in 1995). After becoming endorsed as an Insight Yoga teacher with Sarah Powers and a Mindfulness teacher with Martin Alyward and Mark Coleman, I started offering yoga retreats which integrate the practices of yoga, meditation and psychological enquiry.
Another thread was woven into this fabric when I began to study the animistic cosmology of the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain tradition in Peru with Jeffrey Wium and Tupaq Titto Kuntur. These animistic practices taught me about humility, devotion, trust and surrender, teaching me to listen to the unknown and release limiting beliefs which had been holding me safe but small.
Together, the gifts of yoga, meditation and devotion continue to guide me into an ever deeper and more authentic relationship with life. I look back now at both the challenges and blessings that have come to me with increasing gratitude, knowing them to be the friction and fuel for the fire of transformation and growth.
Trainings and Practices
From 1977: Iyengar yoga
From 1995: Insight meditation
1995-7: Iyengar Yoga introductory teaching certificate (Elaine Pidgeon and Meg Laing)
1996, Oct-Dec: teachers' intensive with B.K.S Iyengar, Geeta Iyengar and Prashant Iyengar, India
2001, Jan-Mar: Ashtanga yoga study with Patthabi Jois, India
2001: Birthlight pregnancy yoga training (Francoise Freedman)
2002: Doula training (Lilliana Lammers and Michel Odent)
2006-7: Dharma Facilitation Programme (Christopher Titmuss)
2007: Iyengar yoga junior intermediate level 1 certificate (Alaric Newcombe)
2007: Meditation and yin yoga teacher training (Sarah Powers)
2007-8: Anusara yoga immersion (Bridget Woods-Kramer)
2009: Iyengar yoga junior intermediate level 2 certificate (Alaric Newcombe)
2013-14: Mindfulness teacher training (Mindfulness Training Institute: Martin Aylward and Mark Coleman)
2014: Insight Yoga endorsed teacher and mentor (Sarah and Ty Powers)
2015: Mindfulness Training Institute accredited teacher and mentor (MTI)
2018-2023: Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain tradition (Jeffrey Wium and Tupaq Ttito Kuntur, Peru)
From 2021: Kalyana Mitta dharma study group (Martin Aylward)
