It’s been a month since I came home from my 200-hour yoga teacher training. On top of that, it’s been a month since I returned from a year of living in Australia. Which means the past few weeks have been one long experiment in integration: taking my old reality and layering it with new perspectives, new experiences and an entirely different self.
When people talk about growth, they often mean a single kind: professional, emotional, or spiritual. But growth wears many faces. The first kind I met came from moving abroad to a place where I knew no one. Starting over forced me out of autopilot. With no familiar routines or easy comforts, I had to become the active architect of my own life. That’s the great gift of relocation: it strips away the external scaffolding and leaves you with the raw material of who you are. And with that, you get to build.
In Australia, I designed my life from scratch. I returned to hobbies I’d neglected, rediscovered creativity, and got clearer about what I wanted to welcome in and what I was ready to release. I left feeling more “myself” than ever before, anchored by a deep understanding of what I value. At the centre of that understanding was one thing: freedom. Freedom of time. Freedom of place. Creative freedom. Now, I’m building a life with freedom at its core, like the stone inside a peach. Central to everything around it.
Writing was one of the freedoms I reclaimed. I’ve been journalling prolifically since the first break up I experienced, I suspect this is universal. While away, I leaned in with more intention. Journalling had always been my way to think without interruption, a place to spill out my thoughts without consequences. It was a beautiful way to process what I was feeling and start to understand who I was. Something I learned is that I care a lot about creation and expression.
In an age of relentless consumption, algorithmic sameness, and the creeping passivity of AI, the ability to think clearly and express yourself feels almost radical. There is a total crisis of people with an inability to think critically or articulate their own thoughts. So writing as a daily practice has become vital for me, even if it’s just a scribble in my journal when I first wake up or before I sleep. I have to write something ,however messy, just as a way to flex the muscle of articulation before it atrophies. A way to honour creating instead of consuming. Substack seems like a great place to connect with others who are similar to me in this way, a place to practise this muscle. Tangent over – I’m so grateful this year brought me closer to myself and as a result to writing.
One of the other life-altering practices I rediscovered thanks to living away from home for the year was movement. This sounds so simple and over talked about but as a uni student who was chronically sedentary and never prioritised movement in my life. This was totally transformative. While abroad, I walked a lot more, started running and fell deeply in love with yoga. Movement alone has an undeniable impact on both the internal and the external world that you inhabit. This sounds like boring and overplayed advice. Like who’d thought getting outside and moving really will make you feel inexplicably better in so many ways. But just to relay it for you again, consistent movement becomes an addictive feeling. I have now become so attuned to how good it makes me feel that I can’t go a day without it.
The difference between myself a year ago and my current self is so huge and I deeply believe movement has been the primary driver for this change. It comes down to an energetic transfer. If you aren’t moving your body all of your energy becomes stagnant. You don’t let your energy move through you and dissipate naturally. It wants to move but you refuse to allow it. This will lead to overthinking, anxiety , and inertia that feels like an ugly combination of laziness, paralysis, self criticism and depression. These are symptoms of trapped energy. It may sound like a reach but as soon as you do some sort of movement your body and energy levels come back into balance and in turn you mentally feel balanced and ‘better’. You will always feel better after movement.
My Love Story with Yoga
The very first yoga class I attended was a £3 session at my university in Manchester. At the time, I was struggling to adjust to a new city, I didn’t know anyone, and I was in an unhealthy relationship. After that very first class, the sensation I felt in Savasana (the stillness of lying flat) was unlike anything I’d ever known. It washed over me like a wave of pure, unshakable peace and deep relaxation. What I didn’t know then was presence. For a moment, my thoughts fell completely quiet. I felt separate from my mind yet deeply connected to my body. I didn’t really think too much of it at the time, all I knew was that I needed to have that feeling again.
I began doing yoga consistently, still knowing very little about it, but it became my refuge during a difficult chapter. I lost yoga for a while after a breakup that left me inconsolable, convinced I’d never recover. What I didn’t realise at the time was that this moment marked a beautiful turning point in my life, one that quietly altered my path. Without knowing it, I had stepped into a journey of deep self-discovery: learning to become my own best friend, my own anchor, and slowly letting go of the need to lean too heavily on anyone else. Eventually, I returned to yoga, still chasing that original Savasana feeling.
When I moved to Australia, I found a community I LOVED. My teacher (Nivedita <3) introduced me to the deeper meaning of yoga: to find internal steadiness. The point of asana (postures) is simply to prepare the body for stillness in savasana at the end. It’s a process of energy alchemy. Accessing the mind through the physical. Dedicating an hour of your time to become in tune with the breath and pairing this with movement cultivates a deep presence. A connection to the body which leads to an internal quieting of thoughts. Like any flow state you become so entranced by the present moment it’s meditative.
This is what real yoga is. Stillness. Not gym yoga prevalent in western society where the environment is fast paced, image based and sometimes competitive. These traits contradict Yoga at its core. The true experience of Yoga is a union of yourself to your cosmic whole and to the earth. You are always connected to this cosmic intelligence; it’s only the mind that creates the illusion of separation. Yoga calls you back. By releasing mental baggage and arriving fully in the present moment, you begin to sense the subtle.
As Vasistha says, yoga is “a systematic way to calm down the mind.” It’s a journey inward—an invitation to observe yourself. How do you respond when things get difficult? What does your mind do in discomfort? Leaning into these moments builds self-trust. It’s the embodiment of the Vedic principle of Abhyasa (relentless reverence) : the practice of showing up, again and again, persistence over perfection. Alongside it comes Vairagya (detachment and surrender) :the art of letting go, releasing the need to control or to perfect. Together, they cultivate equanimity: the ability to remain steady in both joy and pain. It’s a lesson shared with Stoic philosophy: thoughts aren’t good or bad; they simply arise, and we can choose not to identify with them.
These principles apply to all aspects of life: showing up consistently, giving your best effort, letting go of attachment to the outcome and continuing to show up, again and again.
After becoming totally consumed by yoga, I decided to take the leap and do my 200hr. I didn’t have a burning desire to be a teacher, and I still felt like a beginner definitely not “good enough” to teach but I knew that wasn’t the point. It felt very exciting to me. I kept going to classes almost daily before flying to Bali. With the desire to learn more, become better and embody my knowledge even if I was ‘the worst in class’. I half-expected to feel out of my depth, but it turned out to be nothing more than imposter syndrome.
My YTT was in Bali’s jungle Ubud (coming from the word ubad which directly translates to medicine). It was an extremely magnetic place. Dense green, incense in the air, scooters whining down narrow streets, roosters crowing at the wrong time of day. The energy was loud. It was the perfect backdrop for the kind of internal deep-dive I was about to take. Even as a writer, I believe words can’t quite hold the experience. Three weeks there felt like years of discovery squished into 10-hour days. It was exhausting, intoxicating, and impossible to fully describe in one article. I would love to write more about lessons I have learnt but this is, at best, a messy handful of what stuck.
In yoga, self-respect begins with accessing the inner world, entering yourself fully until you are empty. The 8 limbs of yoga, the practice’s philosophical foundation, guide you toward this emptiness (or fullness, depending on how you see it). What you seek is the seeker itself. The quiet jewel of the practice is learning to step back from the practice. It sounds lofty, maybe even wangy, but the truth is simple: ignorance is at the root of suffering, and the light of knowledge dissolves ignorance. Transcendence begins with inquiry, and inquiry begins with the self.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading, and for letting me waffle. This journey with yoga has been anything but linear or neat. It’s messy, beautiful, challenging, and endlessly rewarding. More than just postures or philosophy, it’s become a mirror—reflecting parts of myself I’m still learning to understand and embrace. And maybe that’s the real practice: showing up, exploring, and being willing to sit with whatever comes up, even the awkward, confusing bits. If anything in this resonates, I hope it inspires you to lean into your own journey, wherever it might lead.