Find your Joy and Follow It For More Aligned Living

What if joy could guide your choices?

I’ve been a managing director, business owner, freelance digital UX consultant, founder of a social enterprise and a humanitarian worker for the UN Refugee Agency. I’m also a mountain leader, yoga teacher and marine mammal medic.

Used to playing different roles, thriving both at home in the office giving advice on digital strategy as well as in the mountains escaping digital and getting back to nature. 

The tension between those worlds never felt like conflict; it felt like contrast and I needed both.

I realised I loved all these roles AND still feel the call to something deeper.

Yoga has been with me – thankfully, all my working life (over 25 years).

In the early years, it was my sport. I took my first yoga class in the year 2000, it was a hot sweaty ashtanga practice led by an ex punk rocker in a church hall.

Later, it became something much more: a philosophy, a lifeline and a way back home.

The movement practice helps me stay mobile to do more of the things I love – adventuring, exploring and playing outside on rock, ice and in the ocean. But yoga also grounds me emotionally.

It brings awareness, focus and balance and reminds me who I am beneath all the roles.

It helps me to be the strongest, healthiest and happiest that I can be. And being more joyful helps everyone around me.

It’s also helped me cope with chronic stress, burnout and deep grief. I’ve learnt to show myself more loving kindness and turn away from less helpful old patterns.

My Yoga Story

It took nearly twenty years for me to train as a teacher; where I went to Peru to study the shamanic medicine wheel, take plant medicine and qualify as a yoga teacher. What a trip that was (literally)! And despite all that life changing medicine, I was back in the office just a few months later.

I just wasn’t ready to teach for a living though, I felt at home in the corporate world and branching out to earn a living on a yoga mat felt too scary. 

After all this time, would I dare to to share yoga for a living? Could I do it all, have both?

Finding The Courage

It took the passing of a dear friend to shift everything. When she became ill, she stopped doing anything that didn’t bring her joy. Watching her choose so intentionally how she spent her time, cracked something open in me.

Not that I didn’t love my work. And I’m very proud of the work I’ve done. However, events conspired to push me in this direction, all the sign posts were pointing this way and so it really was now or never. 

Life is short. We hear it all the time but now it was real, I felt it. And I knew I had to honour her by living more joyfully.

Moving to Skye with a strong community and group of friends that support and nourish me has helped me find the courage to follow my dreams.

And now here I am. 

Sharing what I love, teaching what I believe in and trusting something good will grow from it.

I believe we need more movement, ritual and connection –

so we can feel better in ourselves,

be kinder to each other

and take better care of our planet.

I don’t know how this story ends but I know I’m living it fully.

If you’re Standing at Your Own Crossroads

Wondering whether to follow joy – I hope this gives you a little nudge. I’d love to hear your story so do get in touch.

If you’re searching for clarity and change, check out our online course