When I was a kid, I had a different hobby every single year, to say that I couldn’t stick with something would be an understatement. I tried everything. Ballet? Boring. Gymnastics? Not flexible enough. Athletics? I didn’t know how to breathe and run at the same time. It took me 24 years to find Hot Yoga.
As a teenager I discovered I had scoliosis, not severe but bad enough to be suffering back pain throughout my teens and adult life. I found yoga a few months after I slipped a rib out of place and had trouble breathing. After a few expensive chiropractic treatments it was suggested that doing yoga might help maintain a healthy spine. So I booked my first class at The Hot Room Leeds.
There is something in your first hot yoga class that makes you feel like you’re totally doing everything wrong but at the same time there’s this sense of achievement that comes with surviving the extreme heat. It’s like I was alive again! I practiced pretty much daily from then on, and not only my back strength improved (and yes, you guessed it, the pain was gone!), also my mental health which at that point was fragile to say the least, and even my breathing got better. All of a sudden I am walking taller, I am happier and healthier than I have ever been.
I graduated as Original Hot Yoga Teacher in the middle of the COVID pandemic, October 2020. Since, I have been teaching the Original Hot Yoga series (26+2) and sharing my knowledge and experience in dealing with back issues through repetitive back bending. You will likely find me upside down in a wheel or doing wall-walks in the hot room.