About Emma

You may have tried Yoga classes or the gym, but something doesn’t quite feel right in your body.

I understand this — because I’ve been there too.

For the last 15 years or so, I’ve always attended some kind of Yoga class. I started out doing Yoga Fitness Classes at my gym. Intense and fast moving. I wish I could look back in time and see how I was actually moving, that even those movements were intensifying my pain rather than stretching and strengthening muscle. I didn’t learn much about how I moved, but it did create an interest and curiosity within me about Yoga.

I used to visit the Chiropractor and Physiotherapist often.

I had shoulder issues, knee issues, back issues. I’d also had three large babies and a substantial divarication of my stomach muscles, which meant my core muscles were incredibly weak. This would result in a lot of back pain. These professionals would manipulate bones and massage muscles back to a semi-comfortable position. However, a few days later the same niggly pain would return.

I didn’t understand that the very way I was using and moving my body was exacerbating my pain.

That by going to the gym or going for that run, it might have been helping me to lose weight, but by neglecting to stretch, strengthen and understand muscles that really needed attention, I was simply adding pain to injury.

A few years before lockdown I started attending classes at a Yoga studio, where an idea was introduced to me that ‘Yoga is a Journey’. That it is not about how far into the pose you can manipulate your body or how good you can make that complicated pose look.

I started to understand that Yoga can be about learning how your own body moves. I discovered how breathing deeply actually helped me relax and move more deeply into a pose. I really started to be curious by how my own body uniquely moved.

This is the Journey of Yoga.

This is the approach I now bring into my teaching. Supporting you to understand your own body, rather than forcing it into shapes. Creating space to move, breathe and become more aware of how your body feels.

When lockdown hit and everything moved online, I was really reluctant at first to do a Yoga class online. How would I know if I was doing it right without the Yoga teacher walking around the class making corrections?

But in those few years, my Yoga understanding, my knowledge of how the body works, and my curiosity increased exponentially.

Without others in the class to follow, I started to really listen to the instructions of the new Hatha teacher I had discovered. I really heard the directions she was giving, the tips — but it was the explanations of why and how that really caught my attention.

I was fascinated with her approach, which is now my approach.

Rather than just giving a single instruction of moving into a pose, my intention is to really help you to understand how you are moving and what the benefits are.

By helping you to think about whether to inhale or exhale with each movement, by mentioning which muscles you are using to help gain knowledge, by describing ways of how to move using imaginative examples, by suggesting modifications if you feel pain, and by detailing the difference between a good stretching sensation and a more uncomfortable or pinching pain — my aim is that you will begin to notice and learn how to move in slightly new ways.

To make small, beneficial changes to movement — and to understand why you are doing so.

This approach is what has inspired me to become a Yoga Teacher, and is a journey I continue on — with you, and with myself.

I am a fully Qualified and Insured British Wheel of Yoga Yoga Teacher.

I offer classes in a group setting, one-to-one, and online via Zoom.

Ready to find out more?

Get in touch today to discover how we can help you