Your teacher
“Sally’s teaching approach is friendly, unhurried, kindly & non-judgemental”
Cathy
“I leave each session feeling relaxed both mentally and physically”
Jamie
“Sally is an inspirational person and her classes are friendly, supportive and offer the opportunity to challenge yourself at your own pace”
Claire
Sally has been practising Yoga & Meditation in a range of styles & approaches for over 20 years. This, together with her extensive professional experience in Education, teaching Dance and PE to school children & student teachers, informs what she teaches and the way she teaches it. And it’s always in flux.
“Sally is always furthering her own understanding and development in mindful yoga and is expert at translating this into our sessions, making them fresh, interesting and rewarding”
Alison
Yoga
What Sally teaches is an eclectic mix of tried and tested yoga practises, based on sound yogic principles and ideas that she has explored over the years. Her sources are the Retreats and Workshops she regularly attends, and the study she has undertaken, and these feed her personal practise, where she explores the potential and impact of different practises for herself and then figures out the details of how to teach them to her classes. In this way, her teaching becomes less ridged, more creative and fresh and is infused with great personal understanding and insight.
Sally originally practised Hatha and then Vini Yoga, but for the last 8 years she has been studying with Bill Wood and more recently Caroline Reid, in a yoga approach which is based on the teachings of the late Vanda Scaravelli.
Sally (and her Yoga buddie Claudia) have had an incredible yoga year of Yoga Retreats and workshops, gleaning insights not only from Bill and Caroline, but also from two of Vanda’s long-standing students, Sandra Sabatini and Diane Long, and other renowned teachers such as John Stirk, Louise Simmons, Catherine Annis and Pete Blackaby.
Sally has been teaching her own Yoga classes since 2004, and holds a British Wheel of Yoga Teaching Diploma, a Diploma in Children’s Yoga from RYE (Research on Yoga in Education) and is qualified with Satyananda Yoga, to teach Yoga Nidra (Deep Relaxation).
As well as Sally’s own yoga classes in the community, she has also had corporate clients and currently teaches Deaf/ Blind students and staff groups for the charity SENSE, including a class in a residential home for the ‘sight-impaired’ elderly. In the past, Sally has taught weekly classes to school children, and now does occasional days in schools on Health & Wellbeing days.
“As complete beginners, Sally had the ability and experience to drop us straight into class, without us feeling too much out of our depth”
Mike & Gill
Meditation
Sally began a personal meditation practise in 2001, learning Transcendental Meditation (TM), amongst other yogic forms of meditation. She has also been a member of the Stourbridge ‘Community of Interbeing’ Sangha, who practice mindfulness according to the Zen Buddhist teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.
In 2005, she went on a retreat with Rob Nairn, (renowned for making Buddhist philosophy accessible for the Western mind), and has studied and practised extensively with him (and his proteges) since then at Samye Ling Monastery in Langholm and on Holy Isle off the West Coast of Scotland. She has a Master of Science Degree in ‘Mindfulness Studies’ from the University of Aberdeen, based on the application Rob Nairn’s teachings in Education. She graduated in 2015.
Sally teaches secular Mindfulness in the local community and trained to teach the ‘Mindfulness Based Living Course’ with the Mindfulness association, which she teaches intermittently in her classes. She has also been a supporting teacher for their ‘Being Present’ programme, and regularly receives supervision to support her own teaching, together with yearly CPD programmes and silent retreats. Sally is currently a member of a Compassion-based Mindfulness group of teachers, who discuss meditation teaching and practise together. This summer she trained with the ‘Mindfulness in School’s Project’ to teach the ‘dot b’ course for school children.
