My self-exploration in the search of helping myself and consequently others, has been ingrained in me ever since I remember it.

Experiencing loss and pain propelled me in wanting to understand myself and the desire to alleviate suffering became a driving force in everything I do.

I have explored a lot over the years, mainly to address my emotional wounds. As I was resolving my own issues, my capacity to understand and support others also grew. I have over 20 years of yoga experience and the mentoring blended into it more recently and organically as people started turning to me for advice and support. I also had different carers but the yoga was always intertwined somehow which really grounded my practice and my teaching.

My personal exploration led me to many places, including India and eventually Mexico which became a base for setting up a yoga teacher training school 14 years ago.

During that period, I was a hard-core yogi, a keen seeker. My approach to yoga was dogmatic. Instead of making the yoga work for me to reveal my true Self, I forced myself to fit into an’ idea of yoga’ to become something I wasn’t.

On the surface, I was kind and loving but I had also totally suppressed most of my anger, sadness and fear to keep up with the appearances of the cool yogi.

Note that period was full of incoherence, and since everyone else around in the yoga community was doing the same, I was actually blending in just fine!

After the exotic experience, I rooted myself in Ibiza – my most growing but also the most difficult experience.

Rapidly, fun, sex and beach were replaced by trauma, therapies, and more trauma. The rooting had allowed all my patterns to be fully exposed.

It all started to show in the day-to-day mundane, living on farm with a challenging partner, add to that an ex-husband turned business partner, a 3-year Finca renovation project, an active community life, a dog training center and top this all up, with numerous house pet and farm animals for extra drama. Shake it all, and BOOM you get my AWAKENING!

My life in Ibiza which had started somehow like a dream turned quickly into something raw and painful.

So not surprisingly, my personal relationships, all started to mirror the trauma and all that comes with it – the chaos, the lack of personal boundaries, the abuse, the betrayals, the drama, the burn out, etc..

Navigating unhealthy relationships and loss plagued the paradise I had spent so much time, investment and effort constructing.

I ‘died’ a few times. With it, came a new level of understanding, of emotional resilience, and a deep compassion and love for myself, something I had initially struggled to connect with.

I owe my companion animals a lot in understanding my self-worth. I feel they self-sacrificed to free me from toxicity and my heart still carries the deep indentations this painful experience left me with.

My healing journey and exhaustion highlighted the need to understand my biological vehicle and to train my somatic conscience. Only when we are emotionally regulated, are we able to in touch with our natural healing abilities and that’s when the real change can occur.

The body is a huge source of confusion as most of our deregulated emotional states reside there. It learns to avoid and dissociates for example, and this can be mistaken for spiritual experiences.

I learned that most of the information (80%) travels primarily from the body to the brain, so trying to override the information stored in the body with mind techniques solely is feasible but can be counterproductive and is likely to lead to more confusion in the long run.

That approach was a game changer.

It was grounding and at the same time the beginning of a ‘grounded spirituality’ for me, something stable and that became more stable with time.

I started understanding how my nervous system works and that there was nothing wrong with me. On the contrary, my body was a super sensitive and powerful scanning machine, I just needed the instructions.

Through various therapies, I learned that our body consciousness is constantly talking to us, to help us resolve traumas or patterns that hold us back. When we feel safe, there is an organic process which allow the information in the physical and emotional body to come to the surface to be looked at and resolved. So, I started feeling it all. And my awakening came gradually in a series of small awakenings.

From this more neutral physical and emotionally liberated space, I started tapping into my energetic and etheric body and all the teachings over the years fell into place, including the non-dual teachings. As I de-cluttered my biology, my connection to Spirit became clearer and more spacious. There was also a sense order and stability, both in the body and Spirit.

Understanding the concept of Oneness, when the body is constantly scanning and unconsciously discriminating because of a false danger is challenging. Conceptually, we might get the narrative, but if the body is not on board, we pretend, suppress, and bypass. This takes us a step further from actually being able to transcend the body and to see that we are actually MORE than the body – and that we are actually ONE!

Resolving wounds made my shaky world collapsed. One day, people, communities and environments were all gone. But I held on to me, onto to my authentic SELF. The pain eventually turned into power and the experience into gold. I have now successfully closed down this long personal cycle and relocated.

My relationships, and everything has changed, not because I moved but because I took full occupancy in me, I own myself. I have my boundaries and from there I can expand beyond them.

Grace, prayers and trust in the unseen, undeniably played and keep playing a huge part in my journey too.