"I believe we can learn be be truly content, joyous and at peace, despite trauma and adverse life experiences, through movement, meditation and breath work. "

Why Yoga Teaching?

I found yoga as a 12 year old in an old portacabin in the school playground, I can't remember the teachers name but he was a wiry Indian man with a jolly attitude. He used to say "Breathe! breath is life. You breathe more you live more". I used to think he was crazy. But he planted a seed. 

Fast forward 10 years and I rediscovered yoga for reasons like many others; to compliment an active lifestyle.  However, yoga then stayed in my life, not for the physical gains, but the emotional. There had been a large portion of my life where I felt disconnected (with body and mind), depressed, anxious and lost. I started to witness the profound impact that yoga was having on my emotional and mental health.  Alongside this, I discovered climbing and started embarking on a series of outdoor adventures.  Whilst traditional therapy helped me understand myself better, it was movement and nature that changed the way I felt.  The green button below is a link to a podcast where I talk about the outdoors, yoga and mental health.

I began to meditate daily and embarked on a one year training in becoming a mindfulness practitioner (OYSP). I also had a life upheaval, quit my job, sold my car and went travelling. Whilst in India, I took my 200hr Yoga Teacher Training under the guidance of Sudhir Rishi in 2017 in Ashtanga and Vinyasa. 

Training and Teaching

After my 200hr training in 2017, I continued in my travels to teach yoga and meditation in India, New Zealand (Sacred Earth Retreat), Australia, Peru (Atma) and Canada.

I returned to the UK in late 2018 and founded Sukha Yoga (Sanskrit for bliss/ease).  Sukha Yoga became Embody with Beth in May 2022. I have worked in several studios including The Yoga Tree in Congleton, Ministry of Yoga in Crewe, Pure Yoga, Substation and Fold Studio in Macclesfield and Mother Nature Sanctuary in Bollington.

My teachings organically adapted from a very alignment based, structured teaching style to a more authentic, embodied movement.  I threw myself into study, trainings and workshops (embodied practices with Tara Judelle and Satu Tuomela) and read a lot of the work of Bessel Van de Kolk, Gabor Mate, Peter Levine and also into research around compassion and kindness to self with Kristin Neff and Tara Brach to name a few. I felt completely aligned to body and breath work as the key to unlock a plethora of emotional and mental health difficulties. After all I had experienced it myself. 

In 2020 I completed a further 30hr teacher training in Trauma Informed and Social Justice Yoga with Yoga for Humankind with the beautiful soul that is Mei Lei Swan. I knew I lacked knowledge and understanding around the cultural appropriation of Yoga, and this training shone a bright and uncomfortable light on my practice. I pledged to do better. I believe my practice is at a stage where I can respectfully nod to the ancient wisdom of yoga whilst weaving my own academic knowledge of mental health, anatomy and neuroscience into my teachings. I believe the ancient Eastern traditions were grounded in pure, experiential wisdom and it's being slowly and surely backed up by modern research. We mustn't eclipse the original teachings.

In 2023 I completed a 50 hour Back care and Wellbeing for social prescribing with Dru Yoga. Within today's modern lifestyle back care and wellbeing are areas in which a huge amount of people are affected due to technology advances (driving, phones, working from home etc) and other factors such as workload and caring responsibilities. To compliment the Yoga therapy diploma I am on I decided to qualify to run courses to help people deal with these very real everyday issues to help improve quality of life.

Publications

I have written for various publications about mental health, yoga and climbing for the British Mountaineering Council (BMC), UKClimbing.com (UKC) and WomenClimb as well as being interviewed by WomenClimb and the Adventure Syndicate. I am also featured as a casestuding in the "to heal" chapter in the Book "Adventure Revolution" by Belinda Kirk.

I was invited to speak at the  Arm Chair Adventure Festival (September 2022)  to be a panelist in discussion mental health and the outdoors. 

To Listen to me discuss why the outdoors, adventure and yoga can all boost mental health with Dr Jenni Myres at the Adventure syndicate click play below!