I have always had an active lifestyle.  Ever since I can remember I was running around with neighours doing gymnastics and spent the rest of my time on the trampoline.  When I got to high school I started competitive trampolining which quickly progressed to springboard diving.  Competitive diving was my entire life for over 5 years and in this time I had the chance to attend several training camps at the Australian Institute of Sport, compete at a National and even an International level.  This was also my first experience for sharing my expertise with others when I began coaching diving to children at schools with special needs.

When I reached year 12 in school, I developed a fear of the diving board and imagined accidents while mid air and chose to give the sport away.  This was partly due to the many diving accidents - hitting the water at painful angles and scrapings of the board that usually go hand in hand with learning new dives and spending 5 days a week in the pool and also due to HSC pressures as well as boyfriend and friends doing other things that I dreamed of doing but my sport demanded I sacrifice.

My social life and school won the battle and I gave sport away and went from a very active lifestyle to a sedentary one, eating from every takeaway outlet at every possible chance.  After at least a year of this,  I noticed I had put on 15 kgs!!

For the first time I had to think about health, my body and weight loss.  I read books and learned all I could about diet, nutrition, exercise and weight loss tips and got out there and shed 17 kgs and got myself back into shape.  During this time, I was working as a secretary while I pursued my dream to become an actor.  Coming to the end of my 3 years of acting school, a friend of mine suggested that I become a personal trainer to give myself control of my work and life style so I could be available to audition at short notice etc.

That was 17 years ago.  It didn’t take long before I had a full diary of clients.  I was lucky enough to train several very successful, well-known film, fashion, music and magazine identities for quite a length of time (one of these clients in particular was training almost every day for a period of almost 10 years).  Spending that amount of time with such successful people was invaluable to me to understand what it took to gain a similar level of success.

During 1997/1998 I moved to New York City to pursue my acting career further.  At the same time, two of my longest term clients, Baz Luhrmann and his wife Catherine Martin were also heading to NYC and John Leguizamo, from Baz’s Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, happened to being doing a one-person show Off Broadway and it was about to move to Broadway.  I needed something to do between my acting and writing classes so I became his intern.  I worked in the basement of his house with his brother (his other assistant at the time) for about 6 months while the show moved from off to on Broadway.  It was another opportunity to witness the hard work and dedication you need to make yourself the best you can be at whatever you are passionate about.

When I was leaving New York to come back home, I felt there was something missing from personal training, I felt there was something more I should be doing to help people with their health.  I happened to do a yoga class the day before I left with some friends and I thought “That’s something I might look into and something that you don’t have to be part of a gym for (not needing equipment)”.  So I came home to Sydney, resumed training my clients and found an advertisement for Ki Yoga Teacher Training.  I didn’t know anything about it, but the days and times suited my schedule so I rocked up, signed up and so began this journey into the amazing world of Japanese Yoga.  I became so passionate about yoga and its powers that acting eventually fell by the way side and yoga is now my life!