Why I Do What I Do
Everything that I share and offer here has been part of my own healing journey. I grew up in London to Irish parents so there was always a sense of the mystical in my household. Tea leaf and palm reading were the norms. Going home to visit family every summer formed my earliest memories such as foraging for berries and mushrooms with my granny and collecting water from the village spring. There was always a traditional remedy to hand a dock leaf for a nettle sting and crossing of gold for a stye on the eye. Storytelling and traditional song filled most evenings, the TV was rarely on. Life in London was a world apart and for me I felt for a very long time that I did not belong.
I would say that my first awakening was sitting in a circle at the age of 15 in a rehabilitation centre where my mother was being supported. Ths circle offered this space for everyone to be heard uninterrupted and it was my first experience of witnessing adults' vulnerability. It was humbling. Much later on at the age of 23 I found yoga. Again it was a space to sit in community and speak your name and share a word or two as to how you felt. This is important because it wasn’t very often that anyone really asked me that question let alone myself. Sure it was awkward but it has become as well as yoga so much part of the fabric of my life that shared space has of course become something that I have wanted to share with others since embarking on my teaching journey.
Yoga has been my medicine since 1994 and I have practiced with many great teachers. It has taken me to far-flung places across the globe around the world, Asia, and India. Yoga has seen me through a demanding fashion career, marriage, loss of my mother, miscarriage, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, divorce, other heartbreaks, house moves, single parenthood, a degree, anxiety, depression and also many joys.
It was through being pregnant that I experienced a true full-body awakening and yoga really supported me at that time with my teacher being a source of immense wisdom and guidance. It was here that I was hearing a language that resonated so deeply, the wisdom of my body making so much sense. In class and with Active Birth preparation I had so many a-ha moments and experienced an unwavering sense of what felt right for me and it felt really good, especially after a lifetime of being told that what I felt was wrong. This really helped me prepare for my baby's birth and the time beyond, honouring my instincts as I stepped into motherhood.
It was in these pregnancy yoga classes that I was introduced to homeopathy and other alternative ways of supporting my health and my families. It was in 2002 that I became seriously unwell. The toll of leaving a marriage, leaving my work, single parenthood, moving home four times in the first 3 years of my son's life, indulging in partying hard when my son would spend time with his dad, and a difficult divorce, led to a total mental breakdown. And in all honesty this is when homeopathy came into its own for me. Before it was a medicine that I used for fevers, colds, teething and hangovers. Now it was a medicine that helped piece me back together. Such was the passion for this medicine that I went on to train formally at degree level in 2004, and go on to study with teachers from India and Greece. I was in full time clinical practice until 2015 and in this time I practised in west Africa as part of the Ghana Homoeopathy Project and on the UK festival scene as part of the Travelling Homoeopaths Collective.
It was in clinical practice that I would see many new mothers and babies, who had suffered as a consequence of their birth experiences. Being curious I wanted to know more about the current climate of maternity services which led me to becoming a birth doula, an Active Birth teacher, yoga teacher specialising in pregnancy, postnatal and womb health. Since 2012 I have supported over a hundred births as a doula and held space as a yoga teacher for hundreds of pregnant and postnatal students in West and East London.
In 2017 I could feel my body beginning to hint toward change, hormonally I felt dysregulated, mentally and emotionally the pendulum swinging drastically from one state to another. Unbeknownst to me that I was entering into my perimenopause and it was also at this time that I had to honour the need for some time out. My son had completed his first year at University unscathed so I felt happy to give myself a sabbatical of two months in Rishikesh in India to continue my studies and complete my 300 hours of advanced yoga teacher training. This time was immense and shamanic in nature, healing the past, connecting to my ancestors, clearing the way as I stepped into this new phase of my life.
Since that time the calling to connect to my womb and earth based practices was a voice I could not ignore. There was a sense of urgency to connect to the wisdom of my menstrual cycle before there was no cycle to connect to, which led to a lot of womb based healing practices, yoni steaming, womb massage, womb wrapping and connecting to her everyday in meditation. Just like I experienced in pregnancy I have been led to honour the innate wisdom of this organ and I have since been guided to hold space as well womb yoga practitioner and a menopause yoga teacher.
My journey to this point has only been guided from what I have needed at any given time for my own expansion and growth. I feel extremely blessed that this is my vocation, it has been a series of following the next logical steps, one lily pad to another, as I move ever onwards in life and in its ever-changing cycles and seasons. What I offer is from a place of deep respect and love. With thanks and praise to my many teachers in all their forms, this earth, the ancient teachings and practices from this land, my ancestors’ land of Eire and mother India and central and south America. Preserving traditional ways for modern days.