Tune in…Turn Up!
My name is Helen, and I am 46 years of age.
Convention says that I should be well past the age that I should be contemplating a career change!
Especially, a career change that involves physical exercise, in a highly competitive field, full of lovely insta-ladies bending in some unimageable positions and always managing to look glamorous.
But here I am… Hello!
I started my yoga journey very late in life, and not by intention. After an arduous journey to try and conceive, after years of failed attempts, 1 IUI treatment, and a heartbreaking miscarriage…I turned to IVF.
Consequently, I had to let go of my obsession with weight loss and running, I just could not risk it, there was one focus, and it was this moment, this opportunity, to finally fall pregnant, for it to stick, to go the full term, and for me to meet my baby.
I still wanted to exercise, and so alongside IVF, my yoga journey began, and as much as I had with my running – I hated it! Nevertheless, there was one focus, and I was not about to let a dislike of something get in the way, and so yoga by ‘you tube’ began.
I would scroll through YouTube and social media content finding pregnant yoga instructors, allowing them to guide me, through a daily practise. My IVF treatment played out into the joyous first trimester, until I finally after three very long years, held my baby girl in my arms.
As soon as C Section healing would allow, I was back on the running track. In fact, I even bought a buggy with suspension to support my ambitions, my poor daughter had a very bumpy start to life!
Even through all of this, I had not caught the yoga bug. More IVF followed, one further failure and another blissful success. Another full-term pregnancy, this time left me holding a darling little boy, and as soon as my OBYN allowed, I was straight back to PT and running as soon as these non-yogi legs could carry me.
Keeping in mind all of this, I hope you are as amazed as me, that 5 years on from my son being born, this year, 2024, I completed my 200 hours yoga teacher training!
How did I go from the crazy busy head, obsessed with loosing baby weight, bolting through daily life, to someone, who now actively engages with her mat on a daily basis? Perhaps even more so how am I now channelling all my ambitions in to trying to pay forward some of the things my daily practise and mat life has taught me?
Simply put the ‘bug-bit’ when I was least expecting it…
I did an ad hoc class, in a very basic neighbourhood studio, with a guide who held the space beautifully and gracefully. Finally, I found myself finally wanting to understand poses, break them down, and attempt them. I should also tell you, that I still can’t touch my toes, not even the 200-hour instructor course could fix that!
It is my true ambition, that one day, I will hold space for someone, over a period in their life and land them with the same yoga bug that has me so enraptured. A bug that gives me the pleasure to tune in and turn up daily to a mat and a practise that I find so rewarding, as a now very busy working Mummy!
