I haven’t always practiced yoga – at least not in a consistent or structured way.

But yoga has always been there for me.

I remember one time when I was 18 and was overtaken by hot, sticky emotions of anger, comparison and conflict, I threw a shoe at a wall just so I could release the energy from my body somehow. I then proceeded to move into a desperate, energised flow of yoga asana out of my need to channel my energy somewhere. As my energy and breath began to align I remember these words emerging from somewhere deep from within my being, clear and true in its weight as a pebble into a pond:

"Yoga is going to save you."

These words might sound a bit grim or dramatic but they have continued to ring true for me at the moments I have needed them most. In recent times my greatest challenge has been managing the fear that sizzles through me at times when I’m navigating symptoms of the auto-immune process that can come out to play in my body (hashimotos thyroiditis). Despite living 99% symptom-free (in great part I believe to my regular practice of yoga), the moments the auto-immune process does flare up and make itself known through a range of symptoms, I have an opportunity to apply and experience some of the deeper aspects of yoga.

Flare-ups have become a re-occurring opportunity for me to apply the theory of yoga and somatics to my own being and witness the mind-body connection and the glorious design of the body at work. Yoga has enabled me to become a better driver of my own body-mind machine and to be with life’s greater questions and unknowns, in times where it really counts.

What a gift Yoga has given me, that even the scariest moments - in which my own body can feel like a dangerous place that I’m trapped in - can be alchemised into the most beautiful sunrises, bleeding colours of insight, beauty, goodness and connection, as the deeper layers of reality are pierced open through contact with some of humanities most primal fears – the fears of suffering, of the unknown, of death.

Fear can be a portal to love. And so too can Love be a portal to fear, where we have to face all parts of ourselves as we come into intimacy with another.

In relationship, in health and in my life, Yoga - an act of placing a space between the mind's reaction, turning towards and being with what is - has helped me find my way through the labyrinth of fear and opened up vast spaciousness where only moments ago I felt trapped.

In other words, Yoga has helped me to turn FEAR into LOVE.

That is the invitation.

That is the adventure.

I am so deeply grateful for Yoga as my teacher, in all of its forms, to be in ever-growing and evolving relationship with it, as a path, as a force. I am so grateful that I have somehow ended up in a reality that sees me holding space for others to be in relationship with it too.

What an honour, a humbling, a joy.

I am so grateful to all those that make it possible, that have trusted me, supported me, given me opportunity and grace. I am grateful to have access to yoga and am in the privileged position to use it, to be employed for it, to be part of its wave when the world needs it so much. I am so grateful to be feeding this life-long companionship, which leads to a path of deep respect and intimacy with self and all of life.

I share all this because there is a collective opportunity on Valentines Day - however capitalistic and far from its original intention it may be – to celebrate LOVE and to celebrate UNION (yoga). And this is what is in my heart at this moment in regards to my journey with love.

Happy Valentines Day to all, may we love, be loved and bear witness to the love that we are xoxo