ABOUT ME

How this helped me become ME

I am curious and I tried a lot of stuff. From a smallie 7 year old girl I did ballet, but I was “dismissed” for being a little unruly and bunking. I did all the sports offered in school — with moderate success in most (even hurdles which is interesting when you are 159cm). As a teenager I did gymnastics, until I didn’t. In my early adult years, I tinkered around with dancing and movement studies in university as part of my performance arts — I am also an actress which is another love of mine, but let’s stay on track.

Then I dived into Kickboxing, for which I did achieve my black belt and a silver medal in competition. And I started Yoga around the age of 20 in the hopes of improving my flexibility for kickboxing, but as the years went by yoga became much more. Actually, I still didn’t fully commit to my yoga practice until I did my own teacher training and discovered the deeper layers of the practice and the profound impact it had on my understanding of life.

But I’m skipping ahead... A few years earlier, before I was a teacher of any sorts...

One night, at a house party, I met two guys who did AcroYoga in the middle of the living room, and THIS was a big turning point for me. I got in there! In a dress, legs in the sky, lime green panties and all. I didn’t care. I was in love. Acro became my darling passion. A fire was lit.

I became a teacher by accident, I thought. I taught two friends some of the basics I learned so I could have training partners. Then people saw us doing acro and yoga in the park and asked about it. Reluctant at first, I agreed to teach some free sessions on Sundays to anyone who wanted to learn. It took off, and I discovered a lot of joy in teaching.

Then a local yoga studio asked me to give some relief yoga classes. Reluctant again, I agreed. I needed to make some cash and it seemed easy enough, after all, I’d been practicing on and off for more than a decade by then. Boom! the joy of teaching was there too. I hurried off to do my yoga teacher training.

My next goal was Acro trainings. I did what I needed to do to make money to get to some good trainings around the world. Along the way, I found and fell in love with Thai Massage. I discovered that I had a lot of love and care for people and this was a channel for that.

I stumbled into the perfect trifecta - Yoga, Acro and Thai Massage. I share and teach them all, but in my own life — one is my solo practice, one is a team effort and the other is my offering to others.

I also completed #handstand365 in 2015— yep, 1 year of #handstandseveryday! so I obviously also love teaching handstands and arm-balances.

Today, I run a successful yoga studio in my home city of Windhoek, Namibia  and my definition of success is that we are a group of more than 10 teachers who offer loving yoga classes to a very close community. It’s much more than a business, @the_yoga_shala is a sanctuary. I teach acrobatics around the world with another incredible community of sharing, caring and fun-loving humans, and I give Thai massages from my home, or on my travels.

Soooooo, that brings us to the present  moment. I have been creating online content to continue sharing these joyful practices with the world.

During 2020, I filmed the FREE 7-day Yoga video series since I had a bit of time on my hands 😉 and its available for free to anyone who wants it.

And there is already some other cool free content on this site, so go have a look-see and leave me some comments or requests on my blog posts. Let me know what you would like to learn. I love making content specific for people!

Love,

Lara-Lyn

P.S. If you wanna try my online yoga classes go to The Yoga Shala and sign up. These are not free but are really affordable and fun.