From a marketer to a yoga instructor
The story of how I became a yoga instructor doesn’t exactly begin when I graduated from university but this was the milestone that would shape my future career.
So there I was in 2007 waving my masters degree in Marketing and Management in my hand envisioning how wonderful and exciting my life would be if I were to work for a big corporation… Long story short, 3 years later it was more than clear to me that this was not how I wanted my life to be… Depleted, miserable, unfulfilled.
The issue was that I didn’t really know what else I should be doing. It took another year of questioning and searching before I eventually lay down a few fundamentals that my work needed to include… I loved teaching (delivering training sessions on soft skills kind of thing); I loved seeing people personally growing around me, and I loved physical exercise.
I still clearly remember the day I got home from my regular yoga class and sat on the sofa in my tiny apartment in Prague and suddenly, out of the blue, I knew I had to quit my job and go away for one month … a few months… somewhere… to sort of detox… physically and emotionally.
Over the next few months, ideas kept shaping and I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do to reach my detox objectives was to take a one month yoga instructor training course. I loved yoga and have been practicing it as long as I can remember.
So I began studying yoga for my own personal knowledge. I didn’t know that I wanted to become an instructor at that point; I just intuitively knew that studying yoga was what I needed to do.
While I was carefully selecting the school I wanted to study at, my circumstances encountered a sudden turn; my boyfriend (now husband) was offered an excellent career opportunity in Abu Dhabi, which was too good to turn down.. So I thought: It’s now or never.… So I left for India where I completed my instructor training in Goa.
My Yoga Journey
Oh how I loved the course and studying traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa with an Indian teacher. I learned the fundamentals of what yoga is really about. I learned that it wasn’t just hopping on the mat in designer yoga pants. It is a philosophy and a way of life. You can study and practice every day but there isn’t a final destination; it is a journey that is to supposed to free you from obstacles in your life.
I decided to share my love and understanding of yoga through teaching; to live it with passion and to teach it with commitment to its ancient traditions. I soon became very busy teaching 2 to 3 classes a day. This was supposed to make me happy; at the end if the day, I was living my dream, right? But after a year and a half I wasn’t 100% happy. Again, something was missing.
By this time I was married; I knew that I wanted to have children so I started thinking about what else I could do with my life. I knew for certain I didn’t want to give up my yoga practice. I knew I wanted to be this nine month pregnant yoga mama still able to do a head stand. It wasn’t long before I fell pregnant so I thought that while I was pregnant, I could teach prenatal yoga. So off I went to India again for my prenatal yoga instructor course 2 months pregnant!
I loved teaching yoga while I was pregnant. My practice and my teaching took on another dimension. I think that only came with the being pregnant experience. I continued teaching my regular classes until I was 7 months pregnant and I finished my prenatal yoga classes in week 39.
Yoga seemed to keep me sane. From my own experience of being pregnant and practicing yoga every day, I can honestly say it made a huge difference. I felt great throughout my entire pregnancy. I didn’t experience any aches and pains; I gained minimal weight; I didn’t suffer from tiredness or mood swings. I have always believed in the power of yoga but now I am even more convinced that it can make such a huge difference in your life and, most importantly, the life of your baby.
From a yoga teacher to a holistic health coach
I love teaching yoga. The best part of my job is seeing the happy, relaxed, peaceful faces of my students at the end of every class. You see the immediate result of your work. This was the element my professional life lacked so much when I was working in marketing. I still wasn’t 100% happy though. I struggled with the fact I couldn’t help people more. I couldn’t see how I could make my classes somehow more impactful. In over a year and half of teaching, I met with hundreds of students; people regularly approached me with all sorts of issues concerning their health or their professional or family lives. I knew I wanted to help; I just didn’t really have the methodology to approach it well enough.
This led me to my decision to study at the prestigious New York based Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN), which I knew was the answer – the missing puzzle piece in my know-how. I graduated from IIN eight months after my beautiful daughter Emilia was born. It was incredibly challenging to combine my new mum responsibilities, keeping my yoga practice active, getting back into shape, and studying at the same time but looking back, I am so proud of myself and happy that I managed it all and learned so much from the experience.
From a holistic health coach to a health coach and yoga teacher working with mums
I graduated from IIN eight months after my beautiful daughter Emilia was born. It was incredibly challenging to combine my new mum responsibilities, keeping my yoga practice active, getting back into shape, and studying at the same time but looking back, I am so proud of myself and happy that I managed it all and learned so much from the experience.
Because
- I had an amazing, almost discomfort free pregnancy, which I believe was largely the result of eating well, and practicing yoga and meditation
- Love for cooking healthy balanced meals
- Experience of being a busy mum who knows how difficult it is to get back to your emotional and physical desired self
Building on these reasons I decided to focus my holistic health coaching on busy mums helping them to understand how nutrition and physical exercise and meditation can help them to simply be happier and more satisfied mums.