“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
Sarah Thompson
I walked into my first ashtanga yoga class one rainy evening in North Oxford whilst buried under my university finals. What felt like a beautiful accident has turned into a journey of over twenty years.
I first fell in love with yoga because of the space that I felt at the end of that class. The feeling – as if someone had for the first time turned down the white noise - was what kept me coming back. Reconnecting with my body via movement and breath was (and is) medicine for spending too much time in my head.
Yoga is just one modality for finding this mind-body re-integration and accessing flow, but it has been the most powerful and consistent one for me. Practising yoga puts me back into direct and honest dialogue with my body and heart so that I am able to hear myself and my intuition. It is both a temperature guage for my life and a mirror that helps me to see more clearly.
Yoga has in its many forms supported me through the toughest and grittiest of times and has helped me to find my breath in moments where that felt completely impossible. Every time I step onto my mat, I feel like I have come home. In the sanctuary and ritual of practice the noise subsides.
I teach yoga because it is my hope that I can be of service in sharing the practical tools and techniques which have helped me with others and holding space for the catharsis that this practice facilitates.
I am grateful for all my teachers and mentors on this path, including my main teachers Stewart Gilchrist and Shiva Rea. I am also thankful for the many spaces in which I have been privileged to teach over the last fifteen years including my teaching home in London, Triyoga Chelsea, Equinox and California-based yoga and music festival Bhatkifest.
Certifications:
200-hour quantum yoga certification - Lara Baumann
200-hour vinyasa flow yoga certification - Claire Missingham
Yoga.Psyche.Soul 300-hour certification – Ashley Turner
“Satisfy my soul, let the day begin. Make the evening roll, let the big sky in. Satisfy my heart, it’s so good to feel. Love is all around, and all the hurt will heal.”
Felice Swapp
I seek. I have often been privileged enough or honored enough to find.
I live in tandem. The world I choose to make manifest, and the way I choose to be, is one where success includes principle and purpose right alongside the hard work and results. Somehow it works for me. I love being able to think and feel, and know that each may be powerful and true in its place, and perhaps more so together. I love being able to be about evidence and fact, right alongside faith and mystery, and to respect them all without seeking to flawlessly define their boundaries.
I love the Caribbean. It is my birthplace and my home. Although I have never been able to figure out whether I am "from" the flat coral Bahamas of my birth, the relatively large urban landscape of my Kingston childhood and of my father, the Dutch Antillean culture my mother provided me from her upbringing in Aruba, or the hilly volcanic British Virgin Islands of my mother's birth (which has become the place I now choose to call home), I am fundamentally clear that my heartbeat is utterly Caribbean. I came to the BVI to find my space after many years of working perhaps far too hard away from my islands. There is a true and real beauty here at every level my mind and heart can see. I find myself, here.
I dream. Perhaps one day I shall be properly flexible. Perhaps one day my meditation shall be effortless and my fingers shall able to create the music I hear in my mind. Meanwhile I shall continue to seek, and sometimes find, and to share space with wonderful souls on journeys of their own.