About

Hello, I’m Freya, and I am delighted to be offering yoga & mindfulness classes in Worcestershire.

I have been drawn towards yoga and meditation since my teens. As an undergraduate in London, I started attending an early morning Mysore-style Astanga yoga class with my sister, sometimes several times a week. From the beginning, I was taken by the atmosphere of quiet but committed self-practice that pervaded these sessions. As my own practice developed, and I experienced, first-hand, the transformative effects of moving and breathing with awareness, I began to develop my own dedication to the path of yoga.

Around this time, during a visit to Sri Lanka, I had my first experience of participating in a meditation retreat. I remember arriving at the Buddhist retreat centre in a state of complete overwhelm after a personal disappointment that had left me heartbroken and confused. In a matter of days, spent in practice and simplicity, I felt not only restored but strengthened, with a clarity and maturity that took me by surprise. After this experience, I was able to reengage with my life in a way that was helpful, kind and wise.

Around my mid-twenties, I started to experience episodes of deep depression. Following the thread of my previous encounters, I turned to mindfulness and completed an 8-week mindfulness-based course specifically aimed at people suffering from recurrent depression. This was a hugely formative experience during which I began to appreciate the real value of learning to relate to, rather than from one’s thoughts.

My academic and professional life was meanwhile taking me in a different direction. I qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 2007 and went on to complete an MSc and PhD in diseases of wildlife, and subsequently took work as a researcher and policy adviser in this field.

I continued to develop my interest in yoga and meditation through practice, retreats and yoga teacher training. Although my work at the time was intellectually rewarding, I felt a growing desire to share the practices that have been so beneficial in my own life. The catalyst for change was learning, in 2019, that I was pregnant with our son Joby. I decided to leave the veterinary profession and dedicate my time and energy to teaching yoga and mindfulness. I haven’t looked back. I now have two yoga teacher trainings under my belt and I’m coming towards the end of the second year of a master’s degree in mindfulness which will allow me to teach the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course (MBSR). I’ve loved teaching in Bristol, where my teaching journey began and I am very excited to now be offering classes at the Fold in Bransford, Worcestershire after relocating with my family.

I strongly believe that anybody can practice yoga and that deepening one’s relationship with the body can be a radical and healing act. Pairing yoga with mindfulness offers us the opportunity to repeatedly come back to yoga as an awareness practice and to explore our internal experience through asana. I feel it to be an enormous privilege to offer a space in which my students can come to know themselves more deeply and learn to relate more skillfully and heartfully to themselves and others.

Lokahaa samasta sukhinoo bhavantu

May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all