My Yoga Journey..
My yoga journey began reluctantly… I’ve always loved playing sports, and thoroughly enjoyed playing Netball competitively throughout my high school years in New Zealand. Unfortunately this led to a lack of mobility and flexibility from never stretching properly post exercise.
So by the time I reluctantly landed on a yoga mat in London, I was desperate to alleviate some the tightness and aches and pains I felt all over my body.
A sporadic practice began to aid muscle recovery to everything else I was still doing and an attempt to gain some flexibility – my toes had been out of reach for god knows how long.
I’ll be the first to admit my love of yoga was a slow burner, growing up in New Zealand and once aiming to play Netball for the Silver Ferns, my brain was harder wired to associate exercise with competition and physical ability and challenges… not the most yogic of approaches.
So initially I kept coming back to class because I could feel the physical benefits, I found it physically challenging and of course there were poses like Crow and Headstand to be “achieved”.
Thankfully those poses took me long enough to nail, and well before I even saw a Pincha – coming once a week was enough for the subtler teachings of yoga slowly started to land with me.
The breath started to flow with the movement more easily and I started to seek the classes where the teacher would share nuggets of yoga philosophy, not just teaching how to get upside down.
Therefore the subtler benefits of yoga, creating space and calm in the mind, cultivating that connection and awareness of our present moments – took me a lot longer to grasp and certainly appreciate, but I’m grateful they eventually landed and now yoga is a part of the way I live my life, not just a job that I love.
Being a yoga teacher is a privilege, to share these practices – and help my students both physically and mentally create space for themselves is truly rewarding!
My love affair with the challenging poses and arm balances still continues today – Pincha and Handstand I’m looking at you. But now I practice these with a greater sense of awareness, non-attachment to the end result and enjoy many laughs on my mat on the way up and down and practicing and teaching everything in between.
Hope to see you on the mat soon,
Stacey xx
Qualifications and Training
Since September 2016 I’ve completed over 400 hours of training and studying different styles and aspects Yoga. My training certainly reflects my journey as a student not just as a teacher as I started to dive deeper into the practices and also personally, deciding to train in pre and post natal yoga to be able to support myself in starting a family.
Vinyasa Yoga
200 Hour Foundation in Power Vinyasa – With Jack Boken of Happy Jack Yoga.
50 Hours Advanced Teaching Techniques – With Michael James Wong and Emily Claire Hill of Sunday School Yoga.
80 Hours of Rocket Vinyasa – With The Yoga People and Marcus Veda.
Yin Yoga
50 Hours Yin and the Chakras – With The Yoga People.
Pregnancy and Postnatal Yoga
65 Hours Pregnancy and Postnatal Yoga Training, as well as 16 hours of CPD in Birth Preperation yoga, and postnatal yoga with babies – all with Yogamama.
