I have been practicing yoga since 2009.
I started following classes to help cope with my stress as I had just started my first full-time job in the hospitality industry.
At that time, I wasn’t able to describe the benefits of yoga but I kept going to the classes, loving the feeling of peace I was experiencing at the end of the class.
Since then, I never quit practicing. Even when I couldn’t join a physical class, I would follow youtube videos (big shout-out to Adriene from FWFG, her personality was always a huge inspiration to me).
From the comfort of my home I started practicing yoga almost every day and that’s when I could truly feel the benefits ON my mat (those aha moments and the ones where I would feel my body opening up and releasing blockages).
Later on, I would use yoga as a tool to improve my general health and ‘experiment’ with it. I was suffering from high hormonal imbalances and my stressful Londonian lifestyle wasn’t helping.
I started reading and researching many information about self-healing, energy work, crystals, aromatherapy, etc.
I tried many different yoga styles, looking for the one that would feel the most organic to me. I wasn’t able to find a singular yoga practice that would work all year-round for me. Rather, I discovered that there were moments were I would benefit greatly from a slow practice and other moments where I could not follow a restorative or yin class, because my energy wanted to move outwardly.
I also realised how important it is to store and move energy without wasting it when it felt like I had more than I needed and I didn’t know what to do with so much energy.
There are many yoga (or other) practices that help to move the energy where it is most useful so it can be used to achieve our goals.
Today, even though, I feel like an eternal student of life that still has so much to learn, I also believe that my practice is much more balanced and healthy than what it ever was. It feels natural for me to adapt my practice to my own cycles (more on this here) and to the seasons of the Earth, so my practice is different every month and every week.
The main influences that make my practice what it is today are:
–Hatha yoga, with a slow vinyasa succession, so the sequences feel more playful
–De Gasquet Method: this approach focuses on the abdomen and perineum health, emphasising the fact that we all have different bodies and needs. It offers different asanas’ modifications to respect everyone’s anatomy. There is also a. strong focus on perineum health which makes it perfect for pre and post natal classes.
–Yin and Restorative Yoga, with inspiration from Insight Yoga by Sarah Powers
–Chi Gong: integrating the Chinese Traditional Medicine teachings, the 5-elements, and the meridians.
-Womb Yoga with inspiration from Uma Dinsmore-Tuli
–Energy Medicine: with exercises that bring back into balance the over/under balanced meridians in our bodies.
–Meditation with shamanic influences
The style I teach today is a mix of these influences as well as practises from my personal experience, which makes it a style of my own, for the benefits of women and taught in a compassionate and therapeutic way.