I remember as a child trying to copy the poses that my mother practiced and when she died, in my early 20's, yoga gave me a way of remembering and connecting back to her, I didn’t have anyone who could guide me through grief, I craved normality in an abnormal place. So I learnt to stuff my emotions down and get on with life, part of my coping strategy was yoga and embodied barefoot dance. .

My journey with yoga has been complex, when I was pregnant, yoga gave me a growing connection to my baby and to my changing body - a sense I was nurturing both of us. Years later in an emotionally abusive relationship where life became challenging. I used yoga as a refuge, my mat became a small rectangle of peace where I moved and breathed. What I didn’t realise was that I was using my practice as a way of both coping but also of disembodying from my life. I would essentially disassociate through my practice of vinyasa flow, get an enormous energetic high that would sustain me. Classic spiritual bypassing!!

Back then I would never have described myself as suffering from complex post traumatic stress disorder (C_PTSD) I just got on with life. I now realise that I spent much of my life developing complex coping strategies to help me engage with life and hide my fear. For sure on the outside I was semi successful; Stage Designer, Silver Gilt Chelsea Garden Designer, mother of two adorable boys, Yoga teacher....but I was trapped inside a cleverly built tower that separated me from the world and kept me safe. The stories that I told myself about my childhood and the people in it that made my traumatic childhood that included emotional and sexual abuse, palatable.