Yoga

Where I teach

I have a Yoga for Migraine Relief course at Helsingin Aikuisopisto coming up in August. I’m very excited: this has been a long time coming – an idea I first had 3 years ago finally coming to fruition!
Sign up here.

I’m also offering low-cost yoga classes at Purna Yoga Helsinki. If you’re interested, pop me an email here and I’ll keep you in the loop – I’m renting out the studio privately, so my classes aren’t on their schedule. More classes coming in August!

How I came to train as a yoga teacher

I have enjoyed yoga for a long time but never would have dreamed of doing a teacher training, had it not been for a lovely little studio in London.

There, I discovered teachers* who infused yoga philosophy into their classes in a way that made it accessible to the not-so-spiritually-but-more-scientifically-minded students like me. Yogic philosophy suddenly became much more intriguing and less ‘airy-fairy I really don’t know what to do with this, just let me have a nice hour of working out and stretching’. I started talking to the teachers after classes, asking for ways to learn more about what else there is to yoga than just the asana (the physical poses we do in class). This also coincided with the worst of my chronic migraine struggles, and yoga became my main form of exercise because I could so easily adapt the practice to whatever was possible for me on any given day.

* Bex & Marisse, I’m looking at you ♡

Slowly, an idea was born…

What if there was a way to use yoga specifically for migraine sufferers? What if not just the asana could be tailored to the needs of migraineurs, but there is wisdom to be found in the timeless yogic teachings that could help us figure out how to live a good life despite the challenges we face when living with a migraine brain?

At the same time, I was part of Maisie Hill‘s online community, The Flow Collective. I had suspected for a while that my migraines were connected to my hormones, and after reading her book Period Power, I wanted to learn more about my body and how to work with my hormones instead of feeling at their mercy (revolutionary idea, I know!). If you’re wondering what this has to do with yoga, bear with me – for her online membership gave me so much more than just insights into my hormones.

Maisie is also a certified life-coach, and through her I discovered the genius approach that is self-coaching: it’s like applied self-CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) that you can use to manage your mind and as a guiding compass for figuring out how to build a life worth living. Given that my life and goals had just been thrown upside down by a chronic illness, this couldn’t have come at a better time.

That’s how I decided to train as a yoga teacher. Not because I want to throw away my scientific training – far from it – but because realistically, I needed something new to sustain myself as much of the experimental work I was doing up to that point just wasn’t in my cards anymore. (Try running experiments that are time-critical when you periodically but unpredictably get knocked out by a migraine – not great.)

In the back of my mind, I had long had the thought that I wanted to do something in addition to science – something that would allow me to help others, or create a community of sorts.

Looking at computer screens and sitting at desks or experimental set-ups for hours – both rather necessary features of modern-day science work – are not very migraine friendly, so I wanted to find something more physical to do, since (outside of active migraine attacks), that is actually quite beneficial for migraine brains. With my neuroscience background that helped me understand the physical aspects of migraine, and my personal experience how yoga could help practically manage the condition, it suddenly felt like I had found “that other thing”: something I could share with others, and in the process, hopefully also help them.

I won’t lie, as a scientist, there were moments in my Purna Yoga teacher training that just didn’t quite gel with me. But by and large, I loved learning more about this ancient way of life, and it confirmed what I had suspected before: that beyond the physical benefits of the asanas, there is wisdom to be found in yogic philosophy that can be applied regardless of any spiritual beliefs. I know I’m going to sound like an utter cliché of a yoga teacher, but I really do think that everyone can benefit from more yoga in their lives and use it to build a better life – in particular those of us with health challenges. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So here I am, a newly minted yoga teacher, a little unsure still how all of this will unfold, but excited to try something new!