HUMANS OF VITAL BEAT

My name is Donna and I have 3 adult children, and work in an Accounts Department sitting all day, hence the need to do yoga! I’m naturally inflexible, and if you do other exercise like I do (I also go to the gym) you need the flexibility so you don’t hurt yourself and exercise is harder to do if you’re inflexible! I started yoga to become flexible, but then it became more; it became a journey of rediscovering who I am - after leaving a relationship after 30 years, I really had no idea who I was. Us women give ourselves to lots of things; you become someones wife and someones mother, I was never just Donna.

I'm also a qualified yoga teacher, having just graduated. I find the body and movement sooo interesting

Yoga strengthens you, I went for a walk in the national park the other day and it was steep and I thought, 'I can do this! I'm strong!' A couple of women even said to me “are you hiking alone!?”. I had a lot of knee pain and that's all gone, I once couldn’t even sit cross-legged on the floor. But I’ve realised how hip mobility can really really help knee pain. Even the philosophy I really enjoy, and that journey including my yoga teacher training is still a journey and it's still coming out in me as I find my authentic teaching voice.

I wanted to do my teacher training, and so I was looking around and then I came here to do some classes because of your Intro Offer, and realised how little I knew! So I started practising here regularly. I like it here, it’s really fun and sometimes yoga can be too serious, I’m the one who likes to laugh in class and I like that it’s ok to do that. Maybe serious is just how people think it should be? I had a friend who said once “the instructor swore?” and I was like, yeah… that's the yoga for me, it’s really approachable and genuine.

I teach yoga at home every week with my friends we have a little class and it's great. My favourite pose is frog pose (mandukhasana) and I really enjoy that release.

I just want to tell people that they should start, they should just do it and if you think you’re too inflexible, then you need to be here even more. People say “I can't touch my toes" and I tell them, 'neither can I! But I can teach it!'.

And honestly, if you just look at the 8 limbs of yoga, the whole worlds problems could be solved if everyone followed the 8 limbs! Yoga is the answer to everything. It’s the question, the answer, and… the pause in between.