8.30 am: I’m jogging around Diglis, trying to keep up doing the things I love, with Lenny, my 10 month son (running pram, essential). Exhausted from another night of broken sleep, the jog doesn’t last long until I decide to walk and work through some bits on my to-do list whilst he’s sleeping…
I call the doctors as Lenny was sent home yesterday from the nursery with suspected Chicken Pox…
…having collected him last week with a nosebleed from crawling, and the week before with suspected COVID, which later turned into Norovirus… the fun is never ending… ‘You are 29th in line to speak to the receptionist, press 1 to be called back, or stay on the line’.
Waiting on the line for 28 minutes, I’m struck by the fact that I called 1 minute after the lines opened, and there were already 29 people needing a doctor this morning. If anything hits home that the world is in crisis this feels like a clear example.
Having made the jump from the corporate world to pursue a more meaningful life, which for me meant helping people, I am constantly asking myself the question – what can I do to help more? I truly believe that yoga makes a huge difference, I’m sure many people will roll their eyes at that, I would have done once too, but if everyone really understood what yoga was, not just twisty poses but a way of living life in ease, the body wouldn’t be showing us so much dis-ease. Our culture focuses so much on treating symptoms (body), but so little on the root cause (mind), it’s no wonder I was number 29 at 8.31 this morning.
I turned to yoga after my father died of a heart attack. Having lived my whole life trying to make him proud, without him I was lost, depressed, anxious and couldn’t see a way out. Yoga saved me, I don’t care that that’s a cliche, it’s true for me. I became determined to help anyone who felt like me. I got qualified to teach yoga and was especially determined to convert the ‘non-believers’, because I was once one of them. So I have always made my classes down to earth, logical, and explained the science and psychology behind everything.
My style of teaching seemed to resonate enough to allow me to train others to become yoga teachers in the same style, which in turn allowed me to open a yoga studio and work with some incredible corporate clients.
But like so many, covid hit us hard. Trying to keep a yoga studio afloat when you can’t open the doors for a year, and when you can, people are understandably scared to breathe in a room together, it’s challenging to say the least. We have obviously taken our classes online, pre-recorded and live, and kept distance between mats in the studio with doors open so it’s safe, but it’s going to take time to rebuild the membership. At the moment the business isn’t viable, so it’s how long we can keep going until ‘normal’ returns, if it ever does.
Our teacher trainings are incredibly successful, and are really what keeps the studio going, so when I ask myself, what can I do to help more, what will bring people to yoga, I think I need to share the depth of knowledge that we do on our teacher trainings with the wider community so that people really understand how yoga can change their happiness and health. In our last two trainings, both groups have reached that moment in the course when they ask – ‘Why doesn’t everyone know about this!?’
I’ve been told several times over the past few weeks that there are now ten times more people on antidepressants than pre-covid. How many people are we interacting with everyday who are taking antidepressants to cope? I can absolutely empathise. There have been several times over the past few months where I have wondered if I have postnatal depression. It’s just been so relentlessly hard, but what that statistic reminded me was that at the time, it can feel totally unconnected to Covid, and totally personal and individual to your circumstance. But taking a step back, it’s obvious that the coping mechanisms we used to use when we felt low, like a holiday, a massage, buying something nice with surplus funds, seeing friends, family, etc have all been harder if not impossible to do. It’s all just that bit harder, and when you’re already struggling, and have nothing left in the tank, there’s no energy to make that extra effort, get over that extra hurdle, so inevitably we can feel stuck, want to give up, and we feel like there’s no way out. I get it, but genuinely, thanks to yoga I have been lucky enough to learn the tools to get out of that feeling. Yoga doesn’t mean yoga poses, that’s the ‘asana’, yoga is ultimately a psychology, a way of living, feeling content internally, despite any external circumstance.
So in a bid to offer more, and to help in the way I know best, over the next few months, I will be sharing some of the key learnings from yoga and psychology in a way which can practically help all of us live a healthier and happier life. If you are struggling with energy, mood, purpose, relationships, health, I genuinely think you will get a lot from what I’m going to share, how yoga really works… even if, especially if, you’re a non-believer!
Want to learn on the go? Listen to our Podcast: ‘Soul Sanctuary’ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to discover how yoga is actually a way of living, in ease, to help us avoid disease both physically and mentally and how we use yoga to understand why we feel how we do and how to step out of our own way to be who we really are and live the life we deserve!!! Hit subscribe to be updated when each new podcast episode is released!
Here’s what’s planned for the upcoming months – If you’re not already, add your email below so you can have a read… if you want, or at least so it’s there for you to come back to when you need!
Autumn Series: Mental Health
- How yoga helps with Stress
2. How yoga helps with depression
3. How yoga helps with purpose
4. How yoga helps with habits and addiction
Spring Series: Motivation
- How to get clear on your goals
2. Seeing your limiting beliefs
3. Understanding your self worth
5. Enhancing relationships
Summer Series: Physical Health
Creation in the making!
