I had many moments in my youth where I felt that I was connected to nature and other human beings through some invisible force I could not quite explain. My body was constantly giving me signs or directions about everything from where to go, what to eat, who to hang out with, to what was to come in the future. Yet, I did not believe nor did I follow those signs. I had to convince myself that those things were not real. How could they be if no one believed me or talked about having these experiences themselves?  Growing up in a society that was so disconnected from the intelligence that our unique bodies hold and are always sharing with us, led me, like many- blindly, into this world of “Happiness is something outside myself.”

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Growing up in a highly dysfunctional and extremely verbally abusive environment, I naturally turned to alcohol and drugs to escape my home life. I remember feeling that what I was experiencing was unhealthy- but no one else questioned it so I internalized the situation as normal. I pushed all my emotions and feelings down deeply and buried them. I was living in my "flight, fight and freeze" response, I was in survival mode. For 8 years, my cells absorbed all the negative words I was told about myself, and soon I believed them to be my truth. I left that environment when I was 18 years old just after I graduated high school and moved across the country to California. I never felt at home in New York, and finally I listened to my internal compass that pointed out west. The drinking and drug use got worse and worse. Finally a decade later, the illusion started to fade away, and my higher self was determined to get through. I quit drinking alcohol in November 2012, that's when I uncovered my love for yoga. Slowly breaking down the walls I had built around myself as protection, I started to remember this feeling of being connected to all beings and the natural world. Starting to feel my energy body more and more, I got deeper into my yoga practice, craving more stillness within my being. I first started with the asana, as many of us do. Feeling that drop of mind chatter and shifting of energy had me hooked!

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While working through many emotions that I had kept bottled up inside since childhood, I was seeking a more in-depth yoga practice since noticing the great shift in my mind and body. A year after diving into yoga, I decided to take a yoga teacher training with Anjali Love (Dr. Cathy Conners). What happened next was not expected nor even what I could have imagined! The training brought up a lot of things for me. I kept noticing that I thought I was wrong when I was asked to answer a question. This kept happening over and over again- me doubting myself constantly. It wasn’t until one of the last training weekends that I had a huge breakthrough: my teacher asked us what had happened in our lives that has held us back, was it a word, action or something more traumatic? My answer was “I don’t know.” My teacher's response to that was this- “that’s an easy way to avoid the truth.” This was a WOW moment as my world turned upside down, rage filled me, but deep down under that rage and anger, I knew there had to be a reason. I was just so used to pushing the hard truth down, down, down. While sitting and listening to all my peers tell their stories, slowly I started to hear the things that were said to me over and over again from the ages of 10 to 18 years old. 

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As my eyes started welling up with tears, hate, anger, shame and most of all fear as everyone started leaving for the day, I sat with my teacher and just let it all go. Saying out loud all those words that were said to me over and over again for 8 years of my life to another human was the most healing thing for me. From that moment on, I was changed forever. I noticed that the subtle body practices of using pranayama, mantra, and movement in the Kriya practices I was learning were helping me work through these emotions in a way I had never imagined. Working with the Himalayan Kundalini practices in this training was my gateway to the beautiful world inside myself that I for so long had forgotten. My intention with that first training was to have a better understanding of the poses, but what I walked away with was so much more than that. I now had a much better understanding of myself. As I began to love myself more, I was remembering who I was meant to be.

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Two years later I decided to do my 300 hour Teacher Training with Anjali Love and learn more about the sacred teaching of Himalayan Kundalini with no intention of teaching, just bettering myself and my practice. During this training, I noticed a large shift since the first one and really started to enjoy teaching others. Feeling in the flow with complete trust and fully dedicated to my practice, I could see an amazing transformation in myself. 

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It came to my attention that throughout most of my life people came to me, a person who openly holds space for them when they needed support, for advice. I would share any thoughts that came to me while holding space with people, which seemed to be coming from an internal intuitive place within me. Time and time again people would tell me how much I helped them and how they felt that I grounded them and made them feel safe. I stopped resisting and began to trust in the universal pull towards my path of working with people on their self discovery and healing.