Hi everybody,
I finally decided on taking action with my blog. I want to give what I learned on my own journey to all of you. Because I feel that it is important for people to grow and learn. Riding this blog for me is also a way of releasing and letting go of the past. Tiers are pouring of my eyes righting this one but I am letting this all be here. This is me and this has made me who I am today.
My name is Lindsey and I run Yogista. I was born in Belgium and I still live there. I give yoga classes just because I have lots of fun doing it and I want to help others. If I can help you feel calm, relaxed after one of my classes that makes me so happy and fulfilled. I also want to help others on their journey of personal growth and life.
I want to tell you how I got to the place where I am now. During high school I didn’t know what I wanted or what kind of profession I wanted to do. In this search, numerous teacher told me I was not good enough. The first time a teacher told me this, was at the age of 12. She told me that the social and technical studies where not going to work and that I just needed to go with a profession. I thought for myself :”This is definitely not what I want to do when I grow up. This is not what I see for my future.” So I talked with my parents and we decided that I was going to try this one. When I was 15 years old, some of the teachers of the social and technical studies told me that I was yet again not good enough, that I was not going to make it to the 6th grade. So there where the option of professions again. Yet again I thought the same thing. So I did my year over on another school and it was good for 2 years. The teachers of the new school told me the same thing as all the other teachers. I thought what do I want now? At that time I was following an interior designer on tv and I thought: “maybe that is what I want to do”. So I looked up for schools nearby and the nearest was in Antwerp. So that was a 2 hour on public transport to even get there. I knew that my mathematics skills weren’t that good but I wanted to try this. Even then at the end of the year, teachers told me I wasn’t good enough for this either. Now at that moment I was panicking because I didn’t have any clue of what I really wanted to do. I only had 2 months to figure this out and also see if there was a place for me. When I was looking at the list with all the studies that you can do in Belgium, I found one study that I wanted to do: “beauty care”. The first thought was, if I succeed then I can at least find a job. And indeed I succeeded and with flying colours. When I graduated, I actually didn’t want to work. All my friend where than already at university, so I was looking around at different kind of studies and I saw nutrition and dietetics. I went to the open day of the college and I was asking the teachers questions about the studies and one of the teachers asked me which studies, I did before and she told my yet again that I was not going to make. I didn’t listen again and after 4 years I got my degree in nutrition an dietetics and I had proved all my teacher, that they were wrong. If you put your mind to it, you will succeed.
During college I learned that exercising is very important so my family and I got ourselves a gym membership. We could also followed all de group classes. We took a look at the list and we discussed which ones we wanted to follow. I remember that I said: “maybe we should try Yoga, because I have a lot of stress from my studies” and we did our first yoga class together and it was a success. I learned so much during these classes. I learned tools that would help me through difficult times in the future.
When I was 25, I had a difficult break-up with my boyfriend at that time. I was having panic attacks, lots of anxiety and hyperventilation. I know that one time, I could not calm myself at home. My parents where away and I had to cal my sister. She came rushing to my house. She left the line open on the phone and eventually she could calm me down. I felt rock bottom and didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t want to feel the pain. So I got myself into another relationship and went on with life bud the panic attacks where always there but less. That relationship ended after 6 months. We weren’t really in love. We where 2 people that just needed each other in that time to go on with life. At that time I didn’t realise that.
After that relationship all the hidden feelings, anxiety, anger came back. My mother told me that she didn’t know how to help me and that maybe it was a good idea to seek for professional help of a psychologist. At that moment it was really hard for me to go outside and to do things. I always felt anxiety. Even if it was to hang out with my friends. I know one time that I needed to go to a housewarming party at one of my friend’s house on a hot summer day. I was having low blood pressure, sweat attacks, not eating well, feeling nausea. I was laying with my legs up on our patio and was thing on ways to cancel this gathering but my psychologist gave me a good exercise with my breath to calm down. I had to shift my focus and count my breaths. I had to breath in 4 counts, pause 4 counts, breath out 4 counts, pause 4 counts (one cycle). And keep repeating this cycle until I was feeling calm again. I did the exercise and I calmed down. All the way over to my friend’s house, I did the exercise of shifting my focus. When I got there the anxiety was peaking again and I wanted to turn around but I pushed through because of a little voice in my head. You should try this and if after 10 min. you do not feel good, you go home. At some point I was not feeling good and did the exercise again on the toilet and I was feeling calm again. Went outside again but the anxiety still remained when I was there. When I got in my car, everything from anxiety that I was feeling was gone because I was going home again. With more of the exercises of my psychologist and yoga I got through this difficult period of my life but I was not where I wanted to be.
I was doing more yoga and reading all about this and call it faith but one day I read an article of a mindfulness
safari in Tanzania by Alina. When I was reading this article my gut told me: that’s where I need to go. Traveling is always been a passion of mine but with anxiety for new things and places it was difficult. I went to Africa on my own to meet the group and what a journey this had been. I learned new things like camping, a new culture, walking a lot of kilometers a day, new people and most important more about myself. One day we walked down a crater with a lake and we were doing a breathing exercise called “The quantum light breath”. Tiers where poring out of my eyes and she told me it is okay. Let I be here. Afterwards I felt so relieved and much better. When I got home I felt stronger than ever.
After a while I felt like I needed to teach and I went searching for courses and found the perfect one for me. I followed my first teacher training (Hatha Yoga) with Yogalife when I was 28. And did a second one last year (Yoga Nidra). The teacher training let me learn a lot about myself and also to release what no longer was serving me. I am so grateful that they came on my path and will be ever thankful for what they have done for me. They gave me insight in different topics of yoga and above all, I have found pieces of myself that I never knew that I had. They told me it is okay to dream, to dream big and not to think of how we are going to get there. Just dream, visualise and you will get there. A long the way I knew I wanted to teach others what I learned on my journey and so we are here today.
So I want to finish with this sentence: “life gives us just what we need and the path we need to follow”.
Namasté,
Yogista Lindsey
Ps. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. I am happy to help you in any way that I can.