My Yoga Story
My journey with yoga began as a teenager, through the classes offered at school for sport. I certainly didn’t resonate with the teacher, a lady who appeared to be in her mid-60’s, dressed in shawls and all the jewels and smelled of incense. As a 13 year old school girl with her friends, this was quite amusing and the 45 minute meditation that she would always start the class with, visualising rainbows and waterfalls and angels coming down from the sky to guide us on our highest path, left us in a fit of giggles more often than not. The class would always end with angel oracle cards, meditation chimes and some stinky oil. If you picked the Arch Angel Michael card, you had basically won the lottery in her eyes. Despite how not seriously I took the class (and even getting thrown out of the class a couple of times for uncontrollable laughter!), there was always this curiosity surrounding yoga lingering within my bones.
I continued to dabble in yoga throughout out my teenage years by going along to some classes with my best friend and her mum. I also enjoyed doing yoga with my mum’s home yoga DVD from time to time. The yoga class once a week at the gym when I was in uni was considered to be a “good stretch session”. The sparks of curiosity came and went through my teenage years and early 20’s, eventually igniting a full flame when I attended my beautiful friend Micaela’s class at Kirra Hill on the Gold Coast.
Micaela’s teaching was the most perfect blend of authenticity and play and she was invitational in her approach, whilst still honouring the traditional roots of the practice. These classes were the first time I had experienced a teacher who welcomed my desire to challenge myself but also to soften and find ease (even if the class that day was a sweaty vinyasa style!). Prior to this, I thought I always had to be one or the other and the inner people pleaser and hard worker within me often chose the challenging route. As our teacher-student relationship developed into 1:1 teaching, the benefits of a slower practice, prioritising nervous system regulation and presence deepened my love for yoga. I am forever grateful to Micaela for her teaching and am honoured to have her as one of my closest friends to this day.
Whilst nothing compared to Micaela’s teaching, when she stopped teaching group classes I had real fun trying lots of different yoga studios to find teachers I resonated with. This led me to experiencing many other styles of yoga, including Iyengar, Hot Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga and even Puppy Yoga! Whilst Traditional Hatha was a harder style to come by on the Gold Coast where Vinyasa seemed to dominate, it remained to be my favourite. By then, my love for yoga as a physical and mental wellbeing practice was strong and I was set on completing a 200 hour YTT in Hatha Yoga. I was craving a solo travel experience and whilst part of me really wanted to do my training in India, the motherland of yoga, there was another part of me that felt nervous to do so as a white female in my mid-20’s. At the time, the best choice for me was a solo trip to Bali, enrolling for the 28 day meditation and yoga teacher training with Samyama. I was drawn to this training for its Traditional Hatha roots, its focus on meditation techniques and I was curious and excited to experience the 3 day silent retreat that the training included.
The training was everything I wanted and needed at the time - slowness and luxury amongst structured days. Each day we were spoilt with 2 yoga classes, organic and vegan meals, philosophy talks and meditation practice. Whilst we were learning and training each day, it often felt like I was on retreat… and that this course was receiving of me. I also really admired the teachers and faciliatators’ respect and love for Mama Bali and their passion in providing yoga authentic to Bali’s yoga history and a sustainable workplace for Balinese employees. The silent retreat was an experience that I have so much to say on and probably will in its own entire blog post. But what came up within that space and the experience of teaching my first yoga class at the end of the training, in ode to Mama Bali and the land, led me to a clear desire for teaching.
When I came home, I poured myself into a daily home practice, something I had done on and off over the years but probably like most fresh yoga teachers, I had a very strong and sudden desire to implement. After a few months I felt ready to begin teaching, and wasn’t too keen on teaching in studio, where I was likely to have less creative freedom and be bound to really early class times. I sought out a couple of venues, community centres and halls to hire, and began teaching classes to some of my friends and other members of the community. This experience allowed me to gain confidence with teaching general spectrum classes and was a fun side hobby alongside my full-time work as an optometrist.
After nearly a year of teaching across various community venues and covering classes in a few gyms and studios, I was craving my own space and wanted to make my yoga teaching more than just a side gig. My intellectual side of me still enjoyed working in healthcare but was keen to make it part-time. At around this time, I was offered the opportunity to take over the established yoga studio at Health Hub in Hastings Point. The current teacher Shannon was heading on a long-term trip around India and I felt a deep sense of honour and excitement to be entrusted with her established yoga community. Teaching in this space, I felt myself growing and learning more as a yoga student, yoga teacher and as a small business owner. I was also so inspired by the community-feel that the students created. Most students would turn up early to class to have a catch-up and then all enjoy a coffee together after class. Many of the students were so supportive and welcoming of me and have become treasured friends. The community was, and still is, quite diverse and whilst I was loving this chapter of my teaching journey, I was also starting to realise that in order to continue teaching ethically and sustainably, I was probably going to need to undertake some further training. I was teaching many older bodies, people with injuries, disabilities and people who often confided in me on big things they were moving through. Students often look to us as teachers, thinking we are “gurus” or are qualified in counselling or that we are these really perfect and put together people that have all the answers (hate to break it to you, but I am just a regular human being, also occasionally moving through big things, who just wants to share yoga). Whilst I knew I wasn’t a qualified therapist and knew I wasn’t a “guru”, I felt more knowledge and education in this space would allow me to be better equipped and would also allow me to cater my classes to a wider range of people.
When researching further trainings that would tick the boxes of increasing my scope of teaching and give me some introductory trauma-informed knowledge, I came across Jala Yoga. I was already familiar with Mollie, the lead teacher and founder, as my original teacher Micaela knew her and she even came and taught a class for us girls on a birthday weekend away. I also booked in with Mollie when I began teaching at Health Hub for a 1:1 mentoring session, at which point I was curious about trauma-informed, mental health-aware yoga and wanted some pointers that I could begin to weave into my classes. I began to see how positively students responded to consent cards for physical adjustments and integrating invitational language that I knew I wanted to learn more and take it deeper. I signed up to Mollie’s training and spent the next year studying with her, teaching my 5 studio classes, running workshops from my studio, teaching a community class at Fingal and working 3 days as an optometrist. Life was full to the brim but I knew I was on path. The training with Jala Yoga was everything I wanted and so much more. Whilst I became confident in trauma-informed teaching and better equipped to adapt my classes to my current students, I had also widened my scope into teaching Pre and Post Natal clients, Restorative Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga and yoga for marginalised communities. The training also gave me an appreciation for evidence-based yoga alongside a further studying of philosophical texts. I came to realise that accessibility and trauma-informed teaching and practices was what yoga was truely all about, and that when we teach yoga in the way that it was intended through Eastern philosophy, yoga by its very nature had to be accessible and trauma-informed. This realisation and the way in which this course is designed to equip you to teach yoga to everyone sparked a new chapter in my teaching career: the creation of Omne Yoga.
Omne Yoga, by its name and nature, was created to be a space dedicated to teaching yoga with a difference (i.e. different to how we so often experience it in the West - ableist, surface level and in-accessible to those within the population who are most likely to benefit from the practice). Taking what I have learnt from my trainings and experiences as a teacher and student, I have created this platform in the hopes that yoga becomes accessible to everyone and to limit barriers to accessing yoga that is trauma-informed. I honour that whilst I am not the teacher for everyone, I endeavour to continue to have the knowledge to be able to adequately hold space for anybody who wishes to practice with me.
Through Omne Yoga, I continue to teach trauma-informed group classes at Hastings Point, free online classes, trauma-informed classes for charities and organisations and 1:1 sessions for personalised, collaborative care. Whilst my personal time on the mat is a little less these days, I feel that through Omne Yoga and my baby boy Elijah, I am in some of my deepest practice of yoga yet: Bhakti (devotion) and Karma (service).
If you made it to the end, thank you for being here!
With kindness,
Alicia