Bodywork Experience

For my entire adult life, I have worked in the healing arts.
At just 19, when I felt torn about what to do with my life, I received a great blessing in the form of career advice. I don't know if my teacher knew that he was shaping my life with that advice, but I am so grateful that I followed it. The advice of a trusted mentor, led me to enrol in a Diploma of Remedial Massage in Sydney. I studied 2 years full time, despite having never considered massage as a career. Joyously, I fell in love with this form of service and spent 15 years working on the massage table. For 10 of these years I worked in luxury resorts and wilderness retreats around Australia and the world. I was privileged to learn with therapists from a vast array of cultures, as well as to treat all walks of life. It was a gracious gift to have the opportunity to see how diverse the world is, from such a young age. People often commented on my intuition, which in my younger years, I could not comprehend. They would exclaim, "You just knew where to go!" I would secretly think to myself, I don't know why I am doing what I am doing, with a bit of a fraud feeling. After enough feedback and contemplation I began to understand... Intuition is a knowing within the body, not necessarily in the mind. When I left my mind out of the treatment, the knowing in my hands could take over. Intuition does not mean you know what you are doing. It means you trust that what you are doing is the best action right now.

My bodywork career took a welcomed turn in 2022 when I discovered Zenthai-Shiatsu. I adored oil massage, but the more present and aware I became, the more I realised how taxing it was on my body. In many ways it was the opposite of what I learnt in Zenthai, "no force" and "both bodies relaxed". My sports massage teacher pushed us to go as deep as we could, yet after so many years, I wondered if there was another way. I found that there was, Zenthai. This form of bodywork is fully clothed, on a mat and more energy line and fascia focused, than muscle focused. Zenthai and my yoga practice began to change the way I worked on the table, until I made the shift to primarily practicing Zenthai. Nowadays, table treatments are a rarity for me, as I have found the results of Zenthai to be far more profound.



My yoga journey, started similar to the bodywork journey- unexpectedly. I found myself at my first yoga teacher training in Rishikesh, India. I was only 23 and was not considering becoming a yoga teacher. I took the training initially to learn more about yoga while I was in its birthplace. The training was a 5 week intensive in Hatha and Vinyasa Yoga, right on the Ganga River. I struggled to comprehend a lot of what I learnt as the terminology was new and the Indian accent challenging to my young ears. This training pushed against all of my edges, one of which was learning to meditate. A fellow student told me about a 10 day silent meditation course (approx 100hrs of meditation). At the time I could not comfortably meditate at all, yet there was a peculiar feeling inside me, that it was to be part of my path. I knew I needed to explore yoga and meditation more deeply first.

The second yoga teacher training I completed was in Nepal, based in Yin, Ashtanga and Yoga Therapy. This too pushed me. I had not practiced the strict Ashtanga sequence before and my shoulders were burning within the first few days. This intensive was for 5 weeks, only this time it was much easier to digest. I had been teaching for 5 years and was more familiar with the Sanskrit terms. I also completed my first Reiki training in Nepal. Although at the time, I still wasn't sure about "energy work", I now understand has always accompanied my treatments.

Once I had completed my second teacher training, with my meditation practice 5 years strong, I felt ready for a 10 day meditation course. I arrived to my first Vipassana training in The Blue Mountains, NSW. The physcial pain led me to doubt what I was doing for the entire 10 days. I thought being in silence would be the hardest part. Sitting for 10hrs meditating a day was certainly the hardest part! It brings up every discomfort that you have not made peace with and for me, there were lots! It challenged me immensely, and there was a strong part that desired to never sit in the meditation hall again. Thankfully, this part did not win and I did go back. The second Vipassana course was the one that changed everything for me. Sitting through all of the pain and discomfort was worthwhile to find the meditation practice that speaks to my soul. Since 2019, I have sat 5x 10 day courses and served a further 5. This practice has impacted my life in more ways than I can name. I am so very grateful to both Goenka-Ji, the modern day teacher of Vipassana, and Gotama the Buddha, who taught the same technique 25 centuries ago. The practice of Vipassana shapes the way I teach yoga, which focuses on cultivating the observer mindset, also known as the watcher.

Meeting my beloved 5 years ago marked the point where my exploring and learning from the outside world shifted, and I dived deeply into my inner world. I stepped away from travel and minimised my load of teaching and bodywork. After 10 years of constant moving, I settled down in Northern NSW. With no connections other than my partner, there were no distractions, unless I sought them. This allowed me the opportunity to take the solitude I needed, to unravel in my own healing journey, which I will share below. It was deeply challenging to see and feel what I had been running from all these years. The challenge was (and continues to be) so very worth it, to have developed such a strong connection to my inner world. I no longer need to run and have learnt to be with everything I feel. It doesn't mean I always like it, but the important thing is to have overcome running from what I don't like. The practice of Vipassana continues to remind me that it is all impermanent changing phenomena. It reminds me when I forget that I have a choice, we all have a choice as to how we respond. We just need to remember this and embody it in our own way.

Yoga Experience

Overcoming 'Running'

My Journey

The teachings of the Buddha resonate strongly with me. The practice of Vipassana (learning to observe sensations and not react) has been my greatest teacher in mastering the great assignment of this life: freeing myself from my reactivity. My relationship with reactivity has taught me just how sensitive I am. Sensitive or not though, we all have the choice as to how we respond and react to what we feel.

I came into this life with a very strong reactivity program, leading me to have stronger reactions than most. Perhaps you relate to growing up in a society that did not teach you how to feel and process your emotions. When feelings are too big and you are told to stop being so sensitive, don't feel like that etc, it is understandable that you may find yourself confused as to how you truly feel. When our society shames many of the more challenging emotions, it is easy for the subconscious to inform you that you don't feel particular ways that you indeed do feel. Many of us have inbuilt drives to want to please those around us. When people add their opinions and ideas about how we should feel, life can become very confusing to a little one feeling so many intense things. An easy out from the confusing intense feelings, is to go into the head, to disassociate.

I was around 25-27 when I started to realise that I was disconnected from feeling. It didn't mean I had stopped feeling. It meant there had been a severing between being able to understand what I felt and why. With all the experience I now have, I would pose the hypothesis that most people with strong reactivity are disconnected from identifying what they feel and why. For me, I needed to withdraw from the world of opinions and distractions to come back home to myself. Learning to be with the big feelings that used to lead to shouting or crying was not an easy task. The feelings we refuse to feel fully do not disappear just because we decide we don't want to feel that way. They get stored in the body, waiting until they are safe to be felt. This is why some of the least reactive people feel so tightly wound. Because they are doing everything to suppress instead of express and not be with the truth of how they feel. For me, once I opened that box of suppressed emotions there was no putting the lid back on. I felt like I was going backwards in the years of growth, because my reactivity seemed to peak an all time high! Now I understand that is actually the signs of reaching real spiritual growth. As we move towards our personal enlightenment, one would think life gets easier. My experience was the opposite. It became harder. I could no longer pretend I was ok with things I was not ok with. I could no longer be around the behaviours that I tolerated to keep the peace. The further I went down my path, the more I knew that this was why I was here. To liberate my own soul from the suffering cycle. To understand how I feel and why, without needing to explode in outward reactivity. It also became clearer to me that the path of yoga that I began teaching over a decade ago, was not simply teaching a practice on the mat for strength and flexibility. I came to understand that the reason I felt like some kind of imposter when I started teaching at 24 was not because of how well I knew the poses or not. It was because I needed to go on the journey to truly understand the meaning of yoga. To come into wholeness with myself and then teach from the place where I could hold another in their own suffering and pain, without needing to be the one to fix it or change it.

We each have a unique mission and it is up to us to find it. If you don't already have a grasp on what yours may be, the simplest way to understand your individual purpose is to start withdrawing from the noise of the world. You can do it as intensely as I did or you can do it subtley. Either way there is one commitment life asks of you... To grow in your own self awareness. What you discover about the truth of how you feel and what you really think may scare you, good! It means you are really getting to the heart of it. It scared me immensely to consider putting myself out there in the ways I am now. Usually our purpose asks a lot of us. Mine has asked a lot of me. For many years I tried to ignore the urge, focusing on my individual souls liberation, content with my inner exploration. In my case, taking more time for me, lead me to the place where I came full circle. I indeed needed time in solitude to come to my own realisations and be able to support others from this deeply embodied place. I am here to support you to do the same.