ABOUT ME
I am English and studied, worked and lived in London for over two decades. However, London was, in a sense, the setting for a previous life, the one I was busy living before I woke up, stepped off the hamster wheel of ticking off societal milestones and fulfilling other people’s expectations for me, and set out to know myself, heal myself and carve out a different kind of life.
I was married, had a secure, well-paid job as a documentary producer, a nice house, lovely holidays, discussions about starting a family.
Yet I was still living with an eating disorder developed as a teenager, felt ashamed, unfulfilled and couldn’t ever seem to feel that I was ‘good enough,’ and used alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms far too often.
There followed an affair, divorce, and in the aftermath: an acute period of depression, the onset of chronic stress as the pressures of my career intensified, anxiety and, eventually, panic attacks.
My life - I - seemed to come apart.
Yoga put ME back together again
It was at this time that Yoga became a daily practice, a gravitational pull, a way of life. Because only by anchoring myself in the present with my body and my breath could I step outside of the storm into a clearing where everything was still. Where my heart was still beating, and where discomfort eased as the tension of suppressed feelings could work its way out of my tissues. My body was physically strong and healthy, I was safe, I was calm – and, in those moments of ease, I remembered that I was alive.
In this way, over time, I came to feel space between a felt sense of ‘me-ness’ and the torrent of painful feelings and negative thought patterns that would play out all kinds of worst-case scenarios, sending cortisol bursting through my bloodstream, wrenching my gut and tightening my chest, just because of something that could happen. This was a breakthrough. Understanding — not just intellectually but experientially — that I didn’t have to be swept along by those turbulent tides.
I came to see the mechanisms of my mind, trying to help me but instead grinding me down with fearful narratives. And I came to realise my agency. I could choose – with the help of my body-breath-mind toolkit - to stand calmly on the shore instead.
uncertainty and change will always
be there…
…is what I realised, having long been someone who liked to feel that she was in control and have everything neat and tidy.
Being newly resourced with the felt experience that there was a part of me within that would not be subject to that ebb and flow, that would always be stable, anchored, at peace, meant that I surrendered more to not knowing and could let go of what was not meant to be.
It freed up a lot of energy to step back and reassemble my identity afresh, and to really think about the kind of life I wanted, not that others wanted for me – and to go out and get it.
And what I wanted was to share my toolkit with others
A decade later, my teaching combines millennia-old Eastern sciences with the latest findings of Western peer-reviewed clinical research into the beneficial effects of body-breath-mind practices.
In 2019, I started working with psychedelic medicines, including ayahuasca and psilocybin (from magic mushrooms) and found them to be another immensely powerful and transformative tool for inner work and trauma healing, very complementary to my personal practice. My work with ESSENTIYA, both working on retreats with groups of guests and longer term with our private clients, brings Eastern-informed practices and my method together with psychedelics and Western psychotherapy.
I and the rest of the ESSENTIYA team aim to empower others on their paths to holistic wellbeing with the tools that have proved most effective for us.
This new life divides my time between the UK, Europe and further afield.