Being embodied is essential for staying connected with ourselves and understanding our lived experience. Life’s stresses can be pretty imposing, yoga offers a space to find ourselves amongst all the noise.

Our bodies crave movement, it is intrinsic to our health and wellbeing. I find it unsurprising that my body has lead me to many different movement practices throughout my life, but yoga has been a constant, a reliable way for me to reconnect and find calm.

I have practised many forms of Hatha yoga for over 30 years including Sivananda, Ashtanga, Vinyasa and Kundalini. Today my practice is inspired by Vanda Scaravelli, with her focus on the spine, gravity and breath. This combined with my dance background, brings a practice with creative explorations of what it feels like to move intelligently, to be still and to breathe well.

My background is in theatre and contemporary dance, teaching for 15 years and dancing professionally, before working as an academic registrar in higher education for 21 years. Balancing a stressful, desk job with an innate need to move was challenging. I know exactly what it feels like to spend hours hunched over a laptop, rushing between back-to-back meetings, and carrying the silent weight of workplace stress in my shoulders, abdomen, hips and lower back.  I loved my career, but my body and mind were paying the price. Burn-out, with its steady erosion of my self-confidence, sleep, and cognitive functioning, pushed me toward making significant changes that have brought me back into alignment with my values and helped me reclaim joy.

Yoga became my sanctuary.  It wasn't about perfect poses or intense exercise; it was about finding a safe space to slow down, breathe, and untangle the physical tension experienced as a result of office life.  My personal practice completely transformed how I handled stress, stiffness and long term fatigue.

I now work as a movement and breathwork coach in South East London supporting groups and individuals, in-person and online, to regulate their nervous systems and to connect with themselves. Typically clients are seeking to develop their own embodied practice, to improve their breathing and reduce tension. I work with the overwhelmed and overworked; people in transitional stages who are searching for change, clarity, calm and deeper thinking; individuals who are burnt out and need to restore their confidence, rest, repair and recover; people who long to move, breathe well and be in their bodies as well as those with an existing embodied practice who want to expand their experience; and individuals who want to find safety and connection in their own body, perhaps after a long-term illness. My lived experience means that I can work alongside clients and class attendees with empathy and genuine understanding. As a coach I am on your side, want what’s best for you and will support you with your own agenda.

I trained with Catherine Annis and other inspiring senior teachers on the Intelligent Yoga Teacher Training programme, ‘a uniquely incisive, thoughtful and intelligent approach to yoga teacher training, driven by current scientific developments in anatomy and movement research’. I continued my breathwork and pranayama training with Laurent Roure.

I am a certified yoga and breathwork teacher with Yoga Alliance Professionals.