The brand ‘The Motorcycling Yogi’ was originally borne out of my two loves in life, yoga and motorcycling; it is an expression of who I am and is about breaking the stereotypes around yoga.
From my early twenties, I spent all my spare time studying holistic therapies. I am trained in a number of healing modalities of all which I still use to this day and are part of my personal practice. Whilst I loved and still love these healing tools, I found that I was still searching for something else.
I first came to yoga when I moved house and into a completely new area. Originally I started attending yoga classes as I thought it would be a great way to meet like-minded people. I soon found that my initial motivation gave way to the need to re-connect to myself during times of stress or upheaval. When I stood on my mat, I entered into the sanctuary of my practice and with that brought a sense of peace.
At that time, I worked in the corporate world, in the advertising industry and had a very demanding job. I had been working in this competitive and somewhat harsh environment for 16 years. The pressure of the long hours eventually took its toll on me and I became physically ill. This is when I turned even deeper into my yoga practice. I left behind my career and stepped onto a new path, the path of yoga.
I decided to become a teacher to help empower people through yoga. I feel it is important to learn yoga rather than just the mechanics of ‘doing yoga’. My intention is to make it accessible to everyone regardless of age, gender, background or fitness and to dispel the myths that you have to look a certain way or be very flexible to participate. The competitive yoga environment is something that has come from the West and certainly does not exist in the true Indian teachings.
My classes are about engendering a compassionate, supportive and non-judgemental environment where we can all grow together and help each other along the way. Yoga for me is about creating community. If you look at research of places where people live the longest, the commonality is connection and support from others.
My intention in my classes is to bring back that sense of togetherness as so often these days we feel isolated. Together we can heal.
I believe having suffered illness that I can understand, to a certain extent, what deep pain and tiredness feels like. They say that illness is a teacher and I hope that it has made me a better teacher. Yoga is not something I just do on my mat, it is my complete way of life.
The majority of my yoga training has been in India or with Indian teachers. I acquired my yoga teacher training certificate in Rishikesh in Northern India with a Yoga Alliance Registered School.
