"LIFE IS WORKING FOR YOU, NOT AGAINST YOU. WHAT YOU WORRY ABOUT, YOU BRING ABOUT"

It can often feel a bit uncomfortable for me to publicly share the nice stuff people write to me – I mean, I love receiving such kind words and it fills me with immense joy to read them. But to share them is something I find hard, tooting my own horn does not come naturally to me but I have to do it. This can be the sticky end of being a yoga teacher, on the one hand I am a yogi and yoga is all about letting go of the attachments, dropping the ego and trusting that all that needs to happen, will happen yet on the other hand teaching yoga is my job and it is what I get paid to do; where you choose to sit on the spectrum of the commercialism of yoga is in my opinion a fine balance and one that I try to always be very honest about. Like everyone else I have bills to pay and sometimes I do just want to be able to buy that dress, for no other reason than “just because”……but the truth is that having a career that I love but that also brings me an income has been the biggest game changer for my life, in fact it kind of blows me away just even thinking about it. Yoga has always been my therapy and the fact that I get to explore this with others is amazing.

There are so many days when I desire an easy life, to maybe simply kick back, teach a few classes, post a few pictures on instagram and let that  be enough. But you see the problem is I wish for more, not out of ambition nor to buy more dresses (well, maybe just one – has anyone else discovered hush – totally lush frocks!) but I do genuinely love and am passionate opening the door of yoga to all people and I am driven to keep offering this as much as I can. Which is why the words of these testimonials mean so much to me because it reminds me that this stuff matters and it reminds me that I am on the right path, that the yoga I am teaching is what everyone and anyone can engage with.

When one person who attended my retreat yesterday, someone who had never done yoga before in their life and then who sent me a message the next day saying that they are now looking at taking a few more baby steps into the world of yoga, I am just like “YES!” – and this is why I do it, why I sometimes take on way too much but why it is all worth it. Today I am tired but it its a good feeling of tiredness, so no, I am not going to sit back and rest on my laurels, I will continue to push my own boundaries and continue to offer yoga in the manner that I love to do. It can get a little scary though, the business of running retreats and classes is daunting, laying out deposits on venues, paying for room spaces and hoping that folk will want to come is so far from my safe place, it simply makes me want to run away and hide, like all the time. In the moments of crippling doubt I have learnt to not be silent about it and to reach out to those who know and love me and I am going to quote a dear friend who, last week, sent me the following words in response to my fears – good friends always know what you need to hear.

“Life is working for you, not against you. What you worry about, you bring about”

So I shall keep on going, keep on doing what I do. It may be blind faith or naive optimism, but I know wholeheartedly that that is what I am here to do right now.

And I leave you now with the words by the great Theodore Roosevelt – words that never fail to give me goosebumps (although I like to replace the he with a she ) :-

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

In peace

x