Maitri Yoga Louth

Hi!!! 👋  My name is Nicola and I run Maitri Yoga Louth. I wanted to share with you my journey so far to give you an understanding of who I am and why I teach the classes I teach.

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Now a warning⚠️ ....It'll be long as I tend to waffle and it'll be filled with unnecessary emoji's as I come from 'that' generation, which my kids don't understand 😁🩷

 

I started yoga while on sick leave to de-stress from an extremely incompetent manager (a bully 😩) and it helped massively. The movement while focusing only on your breath just allowed some time to leave the world and all its issues outside for a little while.

 

About 2 years later, I was officially diagnosed with MS. The whole right side of my body misbehaved, didn't do what I wanted it to, it would speed-wobble, shake, weight 50 times more than it actually did and so much more. I used a walking stick and foot strap to walk and struggled to even carry a cup of tea most days. I had to adapt my car to a left foot drive and I had to be extra careful with face cream ( slapped my own face too many times 😆).

 

I paused yoga then as I was embarrassed that I couldn't do the postures or I might stumbled over and people who laugh.... I really didn't understand yoga then in fairness or I wouldn't have thought that.

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Stubborn me spoke up then and refused to let MS dictate what I could do. It also refused to be the victim, to allow MS to be all I was and make my life into a hardship.

 

So I did more yoga, particularly online chair yoga and meditation (COVID times) with the MS society and then in-person with 2 beautiful souls and I built up a stronger, healthier body and mind. (No stick now, no strap now and I can carry a cup of tea -but maybe not two 😆) . 

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Yes yoga and the movement played a large part in this but so did mindset. It's a mindset that comes from yoga and meditation, a mindset that tells you that you can do anything you want to do, that you are in control of how you live your life.

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I did the Yoga teacher training course to get better in my practice and bring more of the amazing benefits of yoga and meditation into my life.

 

I started teaching a class on Sundays as it became clear to me how important it was to bring those benefits to everyone else, especially to those like myself who thought that yoga was inaccessible. 

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I was made redundant pretty much at the same time this gorgeous studio opportunity came up. So I started teaching yoga full time. I now teach mat based yoga, chair based yoga, meditation, restorative yoga, Tai Chi and hopefully soon, once the body is a little more cooperative, Zumba. 

 

It's been a big and scary change from the corporate world where I worked in learning and development for 25 years for large global companies but a very welcome and much needed change. I still get to live my passion for learning and development through consultation work but now I have the balance my mind and body so badly needed.

Every class I teach is gentle, it's about connecting with and listening to our gorgeously intelligent bodies, it's about taking the time to rest and recharge and it's about taking the time to breathe.... all the things that have made MS part of my life, rather than control it 🧡🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️🩵