About Fiona
Movement has been my first language for as long as I can remember. As a child I danced - ballet, jazz, tap - in retrospect I think I found some relief in fluid movement. At sixteen my mother took me to my first Tai Chi class, which brought a new dimension to my understanding of movement as a meditation. I began to understand that movement brought with it some sort of relief.
I experienced my first yoga classes in high school as a school sports option. Thirty years of practice, and almost 20 years of teaching, it has been my companion through the best and most difficult chapters of my life. Yoga and movement are like a living, breathing relationship with my own body and one that has continued to deepen, and change a lot with every year on the mat.
I completed my 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Byron Yoga Centre in 2009, and have been teaching for almost 20 years. I feel very lucky to have shared practice with people from all over the world. Last year I completed a Graduate Certificate in Yoga Therapy. I also hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Postgraduate degrees in Fine Arts and Education. I carry a love of creativity, artistic inquiry and education into every aspect of my teaching.
My approach is slow, breath-led, and deeply attentive. I bring curiosity to the process, and my intention is to meet each person as the unique, intelligent, whole being they are. I do not believe in fixing. I believe in listening and in creating the conditions for the body's own wisdom to emerge.
Sessions are available online and in person, and are always tailored to you.
“The body’s language is subtle, but it is the language of our being. Learning to listen to it can lead to profound transformation." - Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Portugal
For ten years I helped to establish and manage an off-grid eco retreat centre in the heart of Portugal, a picturesque little valley where we raised small children, grew mountains of organic vegetables, and harvested litres of olive oil each year. It was a life lived close to the earth and the seasons. It was also where my teaching deepened in many ways, teaching so many different people in different places, young and healthy guests on our retreats, older retired ex-pats locally, and my attempts at teaching yoga in Portuguese for children, and some adults. I also had the privilege of hosting and learning from many extraordinary teachers who passed through our valley.
Living off-grid, in rhythm with the seasons and the land, taught me that the body already knows how to regulate, how to rest, how to return to itself. It simply needs the conditions. It was always a joy to witness many guests at our centre experience a glimpse of off-grid living, a week of wholesome food, yoga and meditation, rest and relaxation.
In 2017, the wildfires that devastated Portugal tore through our valley and took everything we had built. Our home. Our retreat centre. Our business. Years of work, of love, of community was all gone in an hour. Our three outdoor kitchens, with gas bottles all exploded, like three bombs going off at the top, middle and bottom of our valley,
What followed was one of the most harrowing periods of my life. The acute shock of losing everything so suddenly and so completely is a crazy experience, and one that continued to live in my body, until it was properly acknowledged with the wonderful somatic modality, Embodied Processing, which I now practice.
I developed PTSD in the aftermath of the fires and I began, for the first time, to truly understand viscerally what it means to be in a body that has been through something overwhelming and has lost the feeling of safety. It took me three years to acknowledge and truly recognise this.
My yoga practice held me during that time, but it wasn’t enough. Despite having the tools I could use to help me, I was pretty much wrecked. Yoga did give me somewhere to bring the sleeplessness nights and the deep grief. I began to feel the need for something that worked even more directly with the nervous system, as I battled the five years of challenging Portuguese bureaucracy that the fire threw me into. I tried some counselling, and also six months of talk therapy, but I needed something more. That search brought me eventually to somatic therapy.
Healing is never linear, it takes time and the magic of slow medicine. I had to find a lot of trust and surrender, and my intelligent and resilient body responded.
I have been shaped by a rich and diverse lineage of teachers, each of whom has left something essential in my practice and my understanding of the body.
I have studied directly with Randall O'Leary of Swara Yoga, Uma Dinsmore-Tuli of the Yoga Nidra Network and Womb Yoga, David Life and Sharon Gannon of Jivamukti Yoga, and Muz Murray, author and teacher of mantra and Vedic philosophy. My early practice was grounded at the Iyengar Institute in Maida Vale, London, and deepened through time spent at the North London Buddhist Centre.
I have been profoundly influenced by the work of Sally Kempton, Donna Farhi, and Tias Little, teachers whose approach to yoga as an embodied, contemplative practice mirrors my own.
My introduction to somatic movement came through Blanche Mulholland of Somatic Alchemy, a meeting that opened a door I did not know existed. From there I was drawn deeper into the world of somatic practice, immersing myself in Continuum Movement and Body-Mind Centering®, the extraordinary work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, whose understanding of the body as a living, intelligent system has fundamentally shaped how I work and how I teach.
More recently I have trained in somatic therapy through The Centre for Healing and The Embody Lab, and I completed a Graduate Certificate in Yoga Therapy through the Yoga Therapy Institute of Australia, a rigorous, clinically grounded training that bridges the ancient wisdom of yoga with contemporary therapeutic practice.
