I absolutely LOVE teaching yoga in the magical location of Tintagel in North Cornwall each week, and I sometimes wonder how did I get here? Cue that song from Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”! Call it divine timing, call it right place, right time, call it whatever, but here I am teaching four classes a week in person and one class online – and doing this feels so right.
How something FEELS is a how I’ve always made decisions and continue to do so. I guess I’ve always known this but never really thought about it, as I thought that’s what everyone did! It may not make logical sense, but if it feels right, I’ll go for it.
This is how I found my way into teaching yoga. As I embarked on my journey into teaching I had no idea of the outcome, but I knew it felt right for me at that moment in time. How it was going to unfold was anyones guess, but I went with it and found myself teaching in Tintagel. What are the chances, this girl from High Wycombe ends up in Tintagel, teaching yoga, mad isn’t it.
I thought I’d use my yoga teaching qualification as an add on to my massage treatments, as I was forever giving advice to clients about yoga stretches and how it can help with more range of movement and flexibility. What I didn’t know was how it would unfold for me into teaching groups of students each week.
I think for me, when I discovered yoga, it was about feeling fitter in my body, what I didn’t expect was how my thinking brain would feel better too. The benefits of yoga for me came to my mental health before my physical health. It enabled me to feel calmer, less anxious, less “do” and more “be”. More centred, more at peace and just more me.
So when, I qualified I naturally fell into teaching classes as I’d been practicing my teaching on a group of friends and just carried this on. It literally just led to me offering classes to the public, like a natural progression.
I had an interesting conversation with a student last week who came to me after being recommended by their GP to try yoga. He mentioned that he’d seen an advert for yoga classes local to him and the photo attached to the article was of an advanced pose, and if he had seen that before meeting me, it would have totally put him off going to this particular yoga class.
Now this yoga class and teacher is aiming at those with yoga experience, looking to advance themselves in the asanas and finding something more that what my student was looking for. When I say I’m a yoga teacher and offer classes, the most frequent answer I receive is “oh I’m not flexible” – this is definitely not a pre-requisite for coming to my classes or any yoga class for that matter!
Come along with an open heart and an open mind and try something you may not have tried before. My classes are accessible and truly welcoming, and I love to teach beginners who are making their tentative first steps into yoga along with those who have their own yoga practice who want to deepen their understanding of yoga. So what if you’re not able to cross your legs or touch your toes (who cares!) but what you gain from yoga with me is a whole hour to yourself, even if its just that, that’s enough. You’ve shown up for yourself and you’re taking the time to pay attention to your physical and mental health. A whole hour just for you.
24 hours in a day and lets say you have 8 hours of sleep, this leaves 16 waking hours, 960 minutes in day – some working, some doing chores, some leisure time, some scrolling on social media! That’s 6720 minutes a week of being awake and if you spend just 60 minutes of this on yourself, this amounts to around 0.9% of your waking hours. So, just one hour of yoga is less than 1% of your waking hours a week, A WEEK! I bet we spend more than that on our phones!
Try it. You may LOVE yoga, you may not, but “if you always do what always did, you’ll always get what you always got” (Henry Ford). Yoga, breathwork, sea swimming, walks in nature, meditation – give it try, because you never know what may work for you.
If you find yourself wanting to find more time for you, to feel balanced, calmer and more equipped when life gets a little tough, you may find that yoga and moving your body physically, stretching your limbs, twisting, creating a little heat and releasing stagnant energy from within you, could help you to understand you a little better. A beautiful balance of stillness in the poses, the breath awareness and savasana helps to calm the mind and focus on you. The movement helps to release that crunched up feeling we may have in our bodies, feeling lighter and more expansive – leading to that feeling in our minds too.
Don’t be surprised as to what feelings come up during or after a yoga class. Tears or euphoria, this means its working! Go with it, honour and hold no judgement. Just observe and allow it to come in and release.
Come along and try a a class with me in person in Tintagel or online as part of my well-being club. You will be given the warmest of welcomes. I can promised a joyful, soulful and playful class with a little sense of humour, and plenty of cues around how you’re feeling, checking in with the breath and how the body is feeling aswell as the mind.