Hello ...

Welcome to my blog! My name is Renée. I’m a mum to a beautiful 2 (nearly 3) year old little girl and a Yoga Teacher currently working towards my 500hr RYT Certification.

I was a hairdresser for over ten years before having my daughter and beginning my journey with Yoga. After my daughter was born, I became unwell with a mental illness called Post-Partum Psychosis which was terrifying to go through and the months of depression that followed was the darkest time of my life. There were periods of time when I was at my absolute worst where I had completely lost touch with reality, I was oblivious to it at the time, reaching places in my mind I didn't even know were possible. Scary.

But has the "worst" thing that's ever happened to you ever turned out to be the best thing that's ever happened to you? That's how I feel about being unwell now that I am experiencing what true wellness feels like for the first time. I never set out to find Yoga, but it came into my life at the perfect time and my overall health and lifestyle naturally improved the more I committed to the practice. Now I absolutely LOVE being on my own meditating and practicing Yoga, it's literally my favourite thing to do. Some people day dream about luxury breaks away in 5 star hotels and while that would be amazing, I find myself day dreaming of spending a week alone meditating in a cave in India #mumlife

The whole experience has opened my eyes to mental health and how seriously it should be taken. Everything I have learned over the past few years has brought me to this point where I know I want to do something to help bring the change we desperately need right now with 1 in 4 people in the UK currently suffering from mental health disorders and numbers rising in children and teens - and that's just the ones that are diagnosed. With too many people not able to access the help they need and tragically taking their own lives. There's so much more we can do and it starts with awareness and making a genuine effort to improve, that's not just saying "It's OK not to be OK" because it's not OK at all. Wellness starts within, for me it didn't come from a prescription from my doctor. Achieving optimum mental, physical and emotional wellness takes work, effort and dedication to yourself.

When you start your yoga journey you begin a journey into yourself. A journey of personal development. It's unbelievable to me that I went so long in life barely knowing myself at all and it took this mental health crisis for me to really wake up. Life gets really, really good when you start to slow down, distance yourself from the drama, go within and start appreciating what you've got. Life is a gift. It's crazy that I spent over ten years in a lifestyle that was literally destroying me, mentally physically and emotionally. I never knew anything else was possible for me. I made bad decisions on a daily basis. Stuck in a rut but completely unaware. I wasn't really living at all, surviving at best. Now, I'm not sure where I'm going or exactly what I'm doing. I don't have a 5 year plan or even a 1 year plan. I'm just trying to follow what feels good in everything I do. Working on myself every day and learning so much as I go.

I love teaching Yoga but when it comes to putting myself out there as a Yoga Teacher, I’ve faced some internal struggles. So much has changed for me over the past 3 years, I ‘ve changed a lot. I’m still new to it all and being totally honest I’ve been a bit scared to get messy and make mistakes. But I’ve learned recently that’s what life is all about, you’re not here to do everything perfectly, you’re here to find what feels true for you and do it no matter how imperfect. So, I started this blog to do something meaningful, or at least meaningful to me. To share my experiences as I navigate life as a first-time mum, my quest for mental, physical and emotional wellness, a new lifestyle as Yogi and Yoga Teacher and everything in between.

Writing has been such a powerful part of my healing process and something that I really enjoy doing. Which is so weird considering 3 years ago writing a letter was foreign to me - texting and a quick email maybe but that’s about as good as it got. The truth is I’ve been wanting to start this blog for so long and I've tried to ignore it and work on other things mainly because of worrying about what other people will think and also because of an episode I had very early on in my recovery where I shared a lot of very personal stuff online. At some point though you really have to stop giving a F*** about what other people are thinking/saying and just do it or you could spend your whole life never doing anything you want to do. Better to try and fail than never to try at all. As far as comfort zones go this is a big step out of mine for me, but it's also something I'm excited to work on. We all have a unique voice that deserves to be heard and this is my way of sharing mine.

So, if you were needing a nudge towards doing something that feels true for you and you’ve been holding yourself back, I hope this inspires you to take that leap or even a baby step towards it, you won’t regret it, growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone!

Love Renée x