About Caroline
My Background
Born and brought up in the North East of England, I studied Law at the University of London (QMW), trained as a solicitor in the City and specialised as a divorce & family lawyer. I started practicing yoga to relieve the stresses that came with being a divorce lawyer and although I didn’t recognise it at the time, the seed of my career change was sown. Some years later, I found myself on a British Wheel of Yoga Foundation Course and then their Teacher Training without having consciously decided to become a yoga teacher. However, as soon as I began to teach, I knew that I had found my place in the world: sharing yoga and Somatics’ endless gifts with students is a joy and watching the true purpose of yoga unfold in someone is a wonderful privilege.
Coming from a scientific household, I have always been interested in the anatomical and physiological aspects of yoga and the potential for yoga as therapy. I have studied with internationally recognised teachers in this field including Doug Keller, Julie Gudmestad and Aadil Palkhivala. I also have a high regard for the world-changing contribution of B.K.S. Iyengar and studied for several years with senior Iyengar teachers, Richard and Kirsten Agar-Ward in Bath. My fascination with human anatomy led me to Somatics, the Fascial Matrix model and more recently to the incredible discoveries in neuroscience helping us to better understand the body’s incredible ability to heal itself. I am first and foremost an eternal student of human health and will never tire of learning about the best ways to bring more ease, freedom and joy to our living, breathing bodies.
My Lightbulb Moment & My Transformation
As a very experienced yoga teacher approaching my 5th decade, I had both strength and flexibility. I honestly felt in pretty good shape and was very rarely ill. Then seemingly out of nowhere, I was hit by the humbling experience of dealing with the peri-menopause which brought sudden, debilitating anxiety and the challenge of a dysfunctional pelvic floor. I struggled on for a while, pretending everything was fine, distracting myself from the anxiety with ever increasing busyness and relentlessly practising pelvic floor and ‘core strength’ exercises in a futile attempt to ‘fix’ and ‘strengthen’ my pelvic floor. I carried such shame about being a yoga teacher and not being able to fix myself and had a strong cultural conditioning that anxiety is just flakiness. I really hated feeling anxious! I told myself regularly that it was pathetic and I just needed to get a grip! In truth though, I felt mentally broken and physically betrayed by my body.
All of this was of course a secret, known only by my husband, I was a mess but a highly functioning one, so to anyone looking in on my life, I was bossing it! This of course made it even harder to accept that I was in trouble as I had to use all my energy to keep up the charade.
It was on a Somatics training weekend in 2017, that I finally confided in my Somatics teacher & mentor, who gently pointed out that the anxiety I was struggling with was in my body not just my mind. She suggested that you can’t resolve trauma trapped in your body with cognitive work alone i.e. you can’t think your way out of anxiety!
The idea that I was carrying around historic trauma in my body which was manifesting as anxiety was a game-changer, the Somatics penny finally dropped. I had been studying and practising Somatics for quite a few years and had a sound intellectual understanding of its principles but I realised I had been ‘doing Somatic exercises’ rather than having the conscious experience of the work in my body. True Somatics requires you to slow down, go inside, listen and feel. My body really was trying to tell me things, I just hadn’t been listening! Too busy bossing the world! Slowly, I began to feel where trauma was manifesting in my body and how to use Somatic exercises to gently and compassionately process and release it.
Around the same time, I had begun to study the fascial matrix model of anatomy; we are a beautiful, elastic web of tissues all connected and in conversation with each other. As I watched our lockdown puppy do yawning stretches, pounce and land with lightness, I too began to feel that such joy, ease and freedom in movement was possible for me. This finally led me to a truly embodied understanding of my own fascial matrix. I began to feel my own web of interconnected tissues and understand that these tissues need conscious elasticity to be truly healthy. The body has its own intelligence separate from the mind, this intelligence is in every cell and the mind and body have to be in conversation to be truly healthy. As I really took my time and immersed myself in Somatic practice, I began to truly feel and understand how to build strength in a way that was elastic not tight, that was resilient and alive.
Of course, this new knowledge and embodied understanding applied to my pelvic floor as much as the rest of the body so I then began to use it to help heal and restore my pelvic floor (which I now realised was tight and stuck not weak and lax as I had been led to believe). For the first time, I felt the holding patterns in my pelvis which had previously been unconscious. Then I began to consciously relax and release them. I had been literally storing trauma and anxiety in my pelvis! Slowly I began to unwind these patterns and restore elasticity and resilience.
Somatics and this embodied understanding of anatomy has brought a youthful Tigger-like spring and resilience back to my whole body and like our now 4 year-old border terrier, I too have access to animal-like yawning stretches and pounce! As I approach my mid-fifties I can honestly say I have more ease and freedom in my body than at any time in my adult life. Mentally I am relaxed, resilient and most importantly, myself for the first time in nearly 50 years.
This work has quite simply restored my body and eased my mind and I truly believe it can restore you too!
My Philosophy – Modern Life is Killing Us!
I honestly believe that our modern lifestyle is slowly killing us! We are made to move and all the sitting and staring at screens is robbing us of our health, both mentally and physically. Also, misunderstandings about strength & flexibility are leading us away from true health. Tight is not strong and being too flexible is unstable. Both are unhealthy, our muscles and fascia need balance and elasticity.
I am passionate about Somatics, somatic yoga and an embodied understanding of the body as a fascial web – this work has huge potential to heal bodies and minds and restore ease and freedom to both! I have seen the remarkable physical, mental and emotional benefits of this work unfold in myself and many of my students.
This work doesn’t just bring healing, ease and comfort to our bodies, it also profoundly heals and soothes our minds making us more resilient and better able to cope with life’s challenges. Students often tell me they had the best night’s sleep in ages, that pain has just ‘disappeared’ or that in a stressful situation, they used their yoga breathing techniques to help keep themselves calm and grounded.
Relaxation is the missing piece! From my very first class as a qualified yoga teacher, I have always kept the final 15 minutes for relaxation having innately known that bodies and minds need processing time and space to integrate. Modern life is ridiculously busy and most people are so over-stimulated they simply can’t switch off. People are constantly being told to ‘reduce their stress’ but simply don’t have the tools. There is a counter-intuitive truth that I believe is life-changing…..if you take time to relax every day, you will have more energy and be much more productive! Just as the necessity for good quality sleep is being re-evaluated, I believe that a daily relaxation practice can be the single, biggest game-changer for health. Ironically it is the one thing that many people find almost impossible and therefore an experienced guide is necessary. Teaching relaxation as a practice in itself is becoming an ever more important part of my work.
My Qualifications and Experience
I have been a yoga teacher for more than 20 years, originally trained with The British Wheel of Yoga
I am a qualified Somatic Exercise Coach trained by Lisa Petersen
I hold further qualifications in Meditation having studied ‘The Progressive Stages of Meditation’ with Maarten Vermasse.
I have studied for many years with the brilliant Yoga anatomist Doug Keller – http://www.doyoga.com
Following my own challenging pelvic floor journey, I have studied the causes of pelvic floor dysfunction with many experts and teachers including Francoise Freedman (Founder of Birthlight) and Anna Crowle. I present workshops and webinars including at the annual Everywoman Festival. https://www.everywomanfest.com/about
I am an experienced teacher of the Yoga for Healthy Lower Backs (YHLB) programme. For several years I sat on its UK Steering Group and assisted with its work to make evidenced based programmes like YHLB more widely available especially in the NHS. I successfully pitched to have YHLB included in the Healthy London Partnership. I represented YHLB in the House of Lords on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Yoga in Society. I have also presented on behalf of YHLB at key events and conferences such as the inaugural Yoga in Healthcare Alliance Conference at the University of Westminster and at the Integrative Health Convention in London.