my story
I want to share with you a little bit about my story.
Not just how and why I practise yoga but more how I came to integrate it into my life, my past and why I walk the path that I am on now. The struggles, the wins, the highs, and the lows. You know, the real stuff.
Club life
I grew up in Sydney, Australia, and I was fortunate to have had a wild childhood of growing up by the beach and surfing my head off. I was in some way your typical blonde salty-haired surf kid. My mother was a yoga teacher so its practices and teachings were always there in the background of my life. She used to teach my friends and me when we were growing up. I dipped in and out of yoga from a young age but never committed to a regular stable practice
As I got older, things began to shift.
Instead of being interested in endless days of waves, I began to get stuck into electronic music and DJing. The weaving of rhythms, extraction of melodies, and the interaction you could create between multiple tracks just captured me. I have a deep love and connection for music, always have, and was often searching for ways to express that. When I found DJing it was game over.
After a couple of years in the King’s Cross nightlife scene, I decided to pursue my ambitions of travelling the world DJing even further and made the move to London to study electronic music production.
After settling in and getting my head stuck into the London club life I met some beautiful people. I was part of a DJ duo called Ossa di Mare and with some other friends, we started running some club nights under the name Tales Collective.
You can listen to some of the old tracks and podcasts here.
New Years Eve 2017/18 - London Warehouse Party
This was a collaboration between Dj's and artists. We would take over spaces and incorporate crazy lighting, and art installations, all with a huge sound system and create a different reality for a night.
The end of an era
Those times hold some very fond memories to look back on. But like all things in life, nothing lasts forever and people change.
DJing took me to some crazy places, gave me some wild experiences, and created some beautiful memories and connections. But I began to become tired of the business side of things. It lost the magic for me.
What drew me to this world in the beginning (as I am sure we have all experienced at some point) was the feeling of just completely getting lost in a thumping sound system with your best mates, meeting new people, discovering new things, and just letting everything else fade away. Super cheesy and cliche right. But cliche's are cliche's for a reason so fuck it. I know you are sitting there reading this and thinking the same.
I then hit a very rough patch of my life. A tricky relationship and a break up triggered a spiral of dark times.
Without going too much into detail, I fell into a space of hating myself, developing body image issues, being filled with anxiety, and just feeling depressed. I didn't want to see or talk to anyone. It hit me how bad I was when my best mate pulled me aside for a chat.
Down the line I decided to pick myself up and make some changes, incorporating meditation and yoga into my life.
I would experiment with yoga by remembering what I had done with my mum and what I taught myself online.
The yoga world sucked me in and I was watching and reading anything I could about it. I eventually started experimenting with teaching some friends.
Fast forward two years and I headed to India to do my 200-HR in Ashtanga and Vinyasa.
Teaching and practising are like nothing I have ever experienced and yet it gives me the same high as when I would play in a night club.
Along the way, I came to meet Ashtanga's rebel sibling, Rocket.
In my eye's it is the perfect combination of tradition and playfulness. It gives you a structure to follow whilst allowing the practitioner freedom to express themselves.
Through all of this music naturally had faded out of my life.
After years of feeling like I was fighting an uphill battle, I had to take a big step back.
Now I incorporate the tools and skills I have learnt over the years into my teaching and classes, curating unique soundtracks for that lift and carry the practitioner through their practice. I like to create a story of movement and breath when I practise and teach with a bit of a party vibe. The sound helps guide people into a space of exploration and inquiry, of playfulness and fun.
I want to share the things I experience through my practice with others and not just on a physical level but also on a psychological and energetic level. Yoga has helped me overcome many barriers within my life to become stronger and more in tune person. And this is why I want to help others, through practice and through sound with an element of play.
