If you had known me for quite some time, you would have probably never imagined that this would be my life right now, teaching yoga and dispensing advice on how to sustain a healthy lifestyle for optimal wellbeing. And to be honest, I still giggle when I say this out loud or type this in a blog post.
To give you a little bit of a background if you are new to my website or my Instagram profile, I was born into an interesting family of ambitious and hardworking people. I was lucky to have traveled across many places growing up, to have been raised speaking two languages and to have been pushed out of my comfort zone more times than I can even count. There was always some sort of plan for my life, whether I was creating it for myself or my parents were helping me find a direction. Until there wasn't one anymore. Until I started questioning why I was doing what I was doing.
I finished high school (twice - once in the US and once in Italy) and I had no idea what I wanted to become. I had spent the past 6 years ski racing and training my butt off working towards something that I realise now was never actually achievable. Yeah I was never going to become an Olympic athlete, I was too lazy to say it as it is. I loved ski racing though, I had the best coach in the world, the best friends and it was such a fun experience. There were lots of tears too, but if I look back, all I have is great memories.
So once my parents, my coach and I realised I wasn't going to become the next Lindsey Vonn (if you don't know her, please Google her cause she's a freaking hero), I was left with a big decision to make. What did I want to do next? Who was I going to become? And I know we all get there at some point. We all face that moment where we need to decide what path to start walking on.
I enrolled in University and decided Diplomacy and International Relations was going to be my career. Maybe an ambassador, traveling the world, exploiting my language skills, I don't know but it made sense. Again, if you know me, you already know that the word "diplomacy" and me don't go well together, I could never be too polite to negotiate. I am more of a cut-the-bullshit kind of person. Whoopsie! So I kind of had to rethink my future once again and I was lucky enough to stumble across a course on International Sports Law, which made so much more sense because of my sports background. My University tutor still thinks I would have made a great sports lawyer, bless him.
So again, do you see a connection between International law and yoga & nutrition yet? I don't blame you, I didn't either. Because there wasn't one! I really didn't know what I wanted to do and what my purpose in life was. I tried a few different jobs between then and a few years ago, but nothing really fit. I always felt like I was missing something and that something was my authentic, truest purpose in life, which I now know is to be helping others live a little more happily ever after.
Bottom line here is, you don't have to have it all figured out at first. You may stumble across different things and might even enjoy them for a while, but deep down you actually know that you won't be doing that forever. If you are still not 100% sure about what you are doing, don't beat yourself up. There's no exact time in life when you're supposed to have your future figured out. All I can say is that I will be 30 years old soon, as my sisters try to remind me on a daily basis, but I am only at the start of what looks like to be my path in life.
That was a big background intro, I apologise, but I felt it was important to share how different my life was back then compared to what I am doing now. I used to think that having a big career, a big salary and work 24/7 was going to make me happy, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. I couldn't care less about a big job title. I am super happy with being a yoga teacher, which for me, has so much meaning and truth because I know it's right for me. You got to do what feels right to you, not to your parents or society. I am lucky enough to have super supportive parents, but it definitely took some convincing at first to make them understand that teaching yoga classes is actually a real job.
So why do I do what I do? After years of pushing myself so hard in every aspect of my life, I came across the practice of mindfulness and gratitude. I started building a new relationship with myself, which began with a new level of respect and appreciation for my body. I had put my body through so much in the past 10 years and it was time to make amends with myself. Reality is that I struggled with body acceptance for so long, going through so many different phases of overeating, under-eating, over training or completely neglecting my health and wellbeing. Before I started my yoga teacher training I had started seeing a nutritionist and eating disorders psychologist to help me overcome some things I was dealing with, and when she heard I wanted to become a yoga teacher she was a bit concerned. I was confused as I thought yoga was for every body, but she rightfully pointed out that the image that western yoga and especially in the London scene, portrayed what yoga teachers generally looked like, was mostly skinny, fit and super flexible. And I was aware that some things would have had come up eventually during the training, but I was ready to accept them and welcome them. Funny enough, the first day on the training, they asked us to stand up in front of everyone and say why we were there. Needless to say I broke down in tears. That was my cathartic moment, my epiphany, I think they call it. I was there to fix the relationship with myself. Years and years of bottling up just flushing out of me.
I decided it was going to be my mission to embrace diversity and make my classes inclusive, fun and open to every body. It doesn't matter how other people see you, as you might have seen me as a perfectly healthy and fit person, but I didn't. I wasn't happy and I did not love myself at all. But I do now and I know that if I was able to make peace with my monsters, you can too. I do what I do because I want you to love yourself and live a healthy, well and beautiful life. You are my number one priority and my purpose wouldn't be real if it wasn't for you, so if you are reading now and are curious of what we could do together to improve your relationship with yourself, just send me a message. You can trust I am in this with all my commitment and passion.
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