I've always been drawn to art, music, nature and travel. Along the way, I also became drawn, quite intuitively, to holistic approaches to health: to food as medicine, to yoga, to indigenous cultures and animist spirituality. 
I became vegetarian aged 12, following a dream; a couple of years later I picked up a book on yoga but it was a few years later, in 1995, that I began a self-taught hatha yoga practice. 

My first degree was in Philosophy (western); after graduation, I embarked on a few nomadic years - living and working in Vancouver, New Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand and Spain, as well as other lands. In New Mexico, I was gifted a copy of the Tao Te Ching: this was my introduction to a path of Eastern philosophy that resonated deeply with me, and set me on new paths. In time I explored aspects of Buddhism and Zen, and eventually Yogic philosophies. Living in Thailand, a Buddhist country, also left a lasting impact on me - the beginning, in a sense, of a path towards opening up the heart.
I returned to the UK eventually, wanting to resume my art studies (which I always regretted stopping in favour of academic studies); a fine art degree course - and my love of the sea - took me to Devon, which ended up being home for the best part of 20 years.

 

Art took me to Devon, but once there I discovered a rich and authentic Yoga community, and experienced some profound healing through shiatsu treatments. I became a long-term student of Duncan Hulin, founder & director of the Devon School of Yoga as well as shiatsu practitioner. For ten years I studied with Duncan, eventually training as a Yoga teacher with him on the Devon School of Yoga 500hr diploma course from 2011-2013. From 2012 - 2022 I taught regular weekly Yoga classes, workshops, courses and festivals in Devon, as well as one winter at a Yoga retreat centre on a little island in southwest Thailand.

In 2009 my Yoga practice had begun to shift towards Ashtanga Vinyasa, a style I found very grounding and strengthening. My first Ashtanga teacher was Andrea Durant; and I was subsequently drawn to the original American Ashtanga pioneers, Nancy Gilgoff, David Williams and Doug Swenson - I attended multiple workshops with them around the UK and in Portugal. In 2015 I travelled to Maui, Hawaii, intending to immerse myself more fully in the island's Ashtanga culture. 

I cannot overstate how impactful the month I spent on Maui at the end of 2015 was for me: transformative in many ways. It marked the peak of my Ashtanga practice and also the point where I realised I needed a more nurturing, feminine approach: I found Maui teacher Jennifer Lynn's Wisdom Flow Yoga classes hugely inspiring, from very first class where I experienced a powerful heart-opening experience. The natural beauty of the island - not only the coast but also the upcountry areas I frequented, and the indigenous healing traditions and culture awakened something in me that I've never quite been able to let go of. I received some magical lomi lomi treatments, inspiring me also to take some one-to-one training in this healing art at Ho'omana Spa. When I returned to the UK my Yoga path began to become a lot more self-directed, my personal practice and decades of experience felt like all the validation I needed. 

Back into the UK, I also craved ways to weave as much of my Maui magic into my work and life as I could. This happened in a variety of ways: continuing to study the indigenous culture and teachings, seeking out places of nature, exploring more feminine intuitive Yogic practice, and a stronger wish to dwell in the energy of the heart rather than the head. To release the stones weighing down my inner bowl of light.

I already had a massage practice, as I'd trained in traditional Thai Yoga massage in a hill tribe village in the far north of Thailand in late 2014; after Maui, I began to weave in elements of lomilomi too. 

My interest in indigenous cultures had taken me to an animist village in 2014 - here, I first heard about a heart-opening gentle plant medicine called cacao, which was being shared in London by a woman who had a background in Amazonian plant medicine ceremony - she shared cacao in the style of an ayahuasca ceremony, I was told. As someone both drawn to and wary of this medicine, I was curious; however, it was only after my Maui heart-opening that I began to really feel a stronger call to go and sit with cacao for the first time; I read Starhawk's The Earth Path, Vicki Noble's Shakti Woman and Howard Charing & Ross Heaven's book on Plant Spirit Medicine - all opening up curiosity around everything from the sacredness of nature, to questions of internalised misogyny, to getting some messages pointing me towards cacao. In 2017 I finally sat in ceremony with cacao for the first time; and in 2018 I embarked on a cacaoista apprenticeship with the ceremony facilitator, Rebekah. This apprenticeship experience - and the first cacao ceremony of the retreat on the quiet north shore of Ibiza -  proved to be unexpectedly deep and spiritually impactful for me.  

Following this initial apprenticeship, I became apprenticed to the plant spirit herself; my ongoing path and the ceremonies I held across Devon, introducing many to this gently potent beautiful medicine for the first time. In 2021-2022 I began studying online with indigenous Mayan teachers, and in 2023 I made a personal solo pilgrimage to Guatemala, where I was able to arrange to meet two of my teachers, K'at and Tzi'kin, on their land, as well as visiting cacao farmers on their farm in the south - the trip was worth it for these two experiences alone! - but I also spent much of my time by Lake Atitlan, sitting in fire ceremonies, receiving personal readings and ceremony from a local aj'qij (spiritual guide), drinking many varieties of cacao, visiting a Mayan women's cacao cooperative and generally delighting in the beauty and cultural richness (and being forever thankful for my Spanish language skills!). 

In spring 2024, after almost 20 years in Devon, and 12 years of sharing holistic offerings, I left.  Amidst the flux, my personal practices of cacao, meditation and Yoga have remained daily anchors and blessings. 
My personal path, my personal explorations continue. Perhaps in time I will share again in some form! I shared these offerings with hundreds of people over more than a decade; doing my best to share with integrity, honesty, authenticity, humility. Still there was a need to step away and focus on filling my own cup after years of pouring my energy into others. 

I continue to sit zazen (a form of meditation) each morning, to cultivate daily practices with gentle sacred plants, to practice my own "lunar" modified, feminine form of ashtanga yoga each day. These are my foundational practices and have been for a long time (in the case of yoga, for over 30 years now!). Same same but different. Art, expression, relationship to the natural world: all part of the health/healing/spirituality continuum. A gradual gravitation towards more intuitive, esoteric interests. I still feel the lasting inspiration of both Hawaii and Guatemala in my heart and soul.

Time in nature, time in silence, in contemplation, are essentials; and I remain alive as ever to the beauty of nature, the poetry of the night sky, with a grounded, nature-based spiritual orientation at the heart of it all.