EMMA’S STORY
Emma is a passionate yoga teacher, keen to encourage her students to learn how to find personal balance and happiness through the combination of yoga movement, yoga philosophy and other self-development practices.
She teaches all levels, from beginners to advanced, irrelevant to age, gender, size, fitness, beliefs, background or lifestyle. Emma teaches Hatha Yoga, Slow Flow/Vinyasa Yoga, Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, iRest Yoga Nidra and Meditation. She also likes to incorporate breathing practices/pranayama, mudras, mantra, journaling, and the wisdom of yoga and Ayurvedic principles and philosophies.
Emma encourages students to personalise their practice, and empowers them to make good choices, based on their individual needs and circumstances. She believes that yoga aids the mind-body connection, encourages self-compassion, and can empower meaningful transformation.
In addition to her yoga experience and training, Emma has qualifications and experience in life coaching, Ayurveda, nutrition, fitness, martial arts, eating disorder support, and trauma therapies. She also has experience in the leisure and hospitality industry running a well-being camp and glamp site, yoga studio, and various yoga retreats in the UK and abroad. She views herself as a life-long student, with a desire to learn from a mixture of accredited courses, other teachers, students, reading materials, travel and cultures.
As a wife and mother of two, Emma understands the pressures of modern-day life. She’s found balance through the principles and practice of yoga and mindfulness and, ultimately, wants to share her knowledge with others. There’s nothing she loves more that to watch someone choosing to become their most authentic self, open and curious to all future possibilities.
ANDY’S STORY
Anyone declaring themselves as inspirational, is likely to be a bit of an immodest ego-maniac. I don’t think that’s me - I hope the people who know me would agree with that!
But I have to say that my biggest inspiration over the past 25+ years has been my wife Emma, as she has been through so much and has always been a wonderfully giving and caring person who has taught me so much. She truly epitomises the expression she often uses in yoga classes: “Soft front, strong back, open mind.” I try hard to learn from her every day.
But I do have my own story too, with a little bit of my own life-threatening drama thrown in for good measure!
It has often been said that people don’t realise the true value of life until they have a near-death experience. Both Emma and I have had our brushes with death and can say from experience that it does have a profound effect on your appreciation of existence.
In 2014 I discovered a small, painful lump on my right shin. It seemed a fairly innocuous item that I wouldn’t have bothered going to the doctors about, if it wasn’t for the fact that we had recently taken a long haul flight and I thought it prudent to check for DVT. The doctor confirm my suspicion that it was not DVT, but beyond that couldn’t offer much more help. To cut a long story short, within 24 hours of discovering the lump, I was being looked after by 2 intensive care doctors, struggling to keep me alive! My heart rate was flitting between 30 and well over 200 beats per minute, my blood pressure was dangerously low and my major organs were taking it in turns to consider giving up for good as my body struggled with streptococcus septicaemia (septic shock).
Over the next 3 days I had 5 trips to the operating theatre to have necrotising fasciitis (also known as the ‘flesh eating disease, a bacterial infection that results in the death of soft tissue - typically the facia) removed from my shin. Necrotising fasciitis is a hideous affliction, which has a very high rate of death, even if a patient is in intensive care. So needless to say this was a very difficult episode of our lives. After 4 days in ICU, I serve another 12 days in a….
Profile to be completed
ndy has always been a bit of a creative; writing books, painting, drawing, etc. He had a novel published in 2008 and has produced and sold hundreds paintings and drawings since the age of 18. This drive for design and creation had its affect on his career too, and he found himself in marketing for many years, working for a number of blue chip organisations in wide ranging strategic marketing and communications roles, eventually starting his own agency with a couple of business partners for a few years. He looks back on this time in marketing with mild embarrassment, having now formed the view that marketing is the eighth deadly sin!
In more recent years, Andy has paid far more attention to what his wife says and has become a better person as a result! Healthier than ever, more relaxed and calm and more able to respond rather than react (still working on this though), Andy is Emma’s first disciple, and always will be.
It was Emma’s idea to buy and semi-retire to the campsite in rural Lincolnshire, which has been one of the best decisions they ever made!
