My journey to yoga teaching

I grew up in Sydney, studied law and have been a corporate lawyer for about eight years.

About ten years ago, I started practicing yoga but always felt that it wasn’t hardcore enough to be my main form of exercise. I used to flog myself doing HIIT classes, aerobic classes, and running. All my muscles were tight and these forms of exercise only increased my stress levels. As a corporate lawyer I already had more than enough stress in my life! The fluorescent lights, thumping music, and competitive nature of these classes never made me feel good about my body. I always felt like I had to do more to get my ‘bikini body’, to sculpt and tone, to lose more weight, and eat less. The comparison trap was alive and well.

I started to slowly increase the number of yoga classes I did. Yoga is addictive and I wanted more of that floaty feeling and peace that yoga brings. Five years ago, I became a member at my local yoga studio and experimented with ditching the high-intensity gym classes, and replacing them with yoga, reformer pilates, walking, and swimming. I felt better in every respect. I was still strong but my body felt less stiff and sore, my weight didn’t blow out like I had feared and I craved going to the sanctuary of the yoga studio rather than having to drag myself to the gym. For me, this change made a huge difference to my mental health.

I was working as a lawyer in a big corporate law firm. I started to resent my job and the sacrifices I was having to make for the sake of ‘billable hours'. My weekends were disappearing to work, weeknight dinner plans became too hard and I stopped loving my life. Holidays became my only lifeline. I thought things would change for the better once I got a promotion but they ended up getting worse.

After much deliberation, I decided to take time off from law and explore what the world had to offer. For the next 10 months I travelled to Europe, Japan and spent a week in Byron. I helped my Dad on my parents’ farm in Central West NSW and I embarked on the life-changing journey of completing my 200-hour yoga teacher training. When I signed up for the yoga teacher training I said to myself – you’re only doing this to advance your yoga practice. You’re not naturally flexible and can’t do a handstand so how could you possibly teach. But this little, persistent voice in my head whispered, why don’t you give it a go?

So here I am! I started teaching online yoga in 2020 to friends and family and it slowly transformed into this beautiful community who religiously get on their mats and practice with me on Tuesday mornings. And now I’m expanding my business. Watch this space!

Why project namaste?

I was a corporate lawyer in Sydney. Every deal we worked on had a project name for confidentiality reasons. project namaste was the code name my friends and I came up with to discuss my exit from corporate law and my dream to do yoga teacher training.

The name started off as a joke but has come to represent my desire to inspire people to feel better in their bodies. To bring more peace into their lives. To know that you don’t have to feel stiff and sore all the time and that yoga is for everyone. There is so much we can do to reclaim our health and wellbeing.

project namaste is about offering yoga practices that everyone can do and sharing nuggets of gold I learn along the way that have helped me to get more out of life.