Well, quite a long story. I will try to keep it short. I grew up in a lovely and loving family, horses, hunting, dressage and swim competitions, holidays, boarding school in England … a very sweet childhood. After I finished A Levels I’ve done an apprenticeship in Brenners Park Hotel & Spa in Baden-Baden, Restaurantmanagament. After successfully graduating I was living in Barcelona for an awesome, crazy year but to do something ‘right’ I went back to Germany to study Hotel- and Touristmanagement. Good time it was mostly. I loved my time in Timmendorfer Strand where my dual partner, the Grand Hotel Seeschloesschen, was. I got along very well with the owner who made me manage the Restaurant and trusted and supported me a lot. In my free time I went horse riding, on boat trips, just loving life. Well, after a while I thought I need to do something else with my life, and as I thought Berlin is the best place to be for me during this time because the city promises so much, I moved to Berlin. O well, everything has to have a reason, isn’t it? I left everything behind and made my way to our capitol city, Berlin. And as you can imagine, there was nothing like Timmendorfer Strand. I had a good job managing a Restaurant and being the eventmanager of the same company but it was way too much for me. Almost no sleep, loads of going out and partying, I just lost the floor under my feet. Everything went crazy, a friend died, one tried to kill himself, I didn’t really see the difference between the party scene and the real world any more… My family was there for me all the time which I am so so grateful for. All of a sudden I realized that my friendships were pretty superficial (there is this story when I sat in Weinbergspark after a great walk finding wild herbs. I guess I haven’t been shaved on my legs too well so a ‘friend’ came and asked me whether I wanna go to Berghain with them. She saw my legs and said: Well, Anna, better not today. She loaughed and went away.) I felt so incredible lonely, did everything what got me back onto my feet again, back to the Anna who I used to be before. One day I found an article about Yoga and the benefits. So I started with Youtube Videos and Yogaeasy. I didn’t really know what I was actually doing there on my blanket but it just felt right. Yoga, hiking and loads of bicycling helped me to see that I needed to leave Berlin. I went to Hamburg to manage another Restaurant but I was too weak to fulfill the demands of the owners which made me even more sad. Well, at this time I read a book about a girl who left her home to walk through the dessert by herself to find herself again. I was so amazed by that story and at this very moment, a friend from Dortmund called me: ‘Anna, I will leave to Australia.’ She said. ‘Ok, I am leaving as well. When are you going?’

Two months later I was sitting in the airplane on my way to Sydney. (Without her but we met later on a Roadtrip through Newzealand). WOW, YIPPIE, YEAH. So the journey started. The journey was a journey finding back to myself, meeting incredibly great people, seeing unbelievable things, living in Ashrams, studying Yoga, finding Ayurveda. I started in Sydney, travelled Australia, Newzealand, Indonesia and Malaysia. In Bali, I did my Yoga teacher training. In Australia I worked quite a lot to finance my trip (in the end I had more money than I left with 🙂 and lived in the Mangrove Yoga Ashram (one of the best times in my life), in Newzealand I worked picking grapes which was horror because it was raining like hell and we were standing in the fields for 12-13 hours each day but well, the people from Fitchi made me laugh so much and I heared amazing stories about other people’s life. I was a groom for the horses of an amazing family and looked after there house, vinyard and animals for some weeks (I only realized that I was alone when they left the property where I have been living with them, so really alone, no people around, the next house was 12 km away 😉 but I loved this time over there only with the animals and myself. I’ve learned so much about gardening and growing my own food and I built up a very strong relationship with the chicken and the dog and the horses.

I can tell thousands of stories about this trip but yeah, back to the question how I became a Yoga teacher? I was in Bali practicing Ashtanga Yoga with this amazing teacher Sarah. I have never done Ashtanga Yoga before so I was directly hit by the energy of this practice. The Ujayi sound, the sweat of the people who in my eyes did crazy movements, the strength of Sara’s eyes on the one hand and the love on the other hand. There was a shift in me which I realized when I walked out of the Shala. I can’t really describe this feeling, it was just BÄÄÄÄM! WOW! I am Anna, I am alive, I love, I live, I am here now, I am on my feet, strong, powerful, I see a light!!!!

Yoga helped me to find back onto my feet, it just makes me think more critical and lets me see the love in me and others. I am so thankful every day to be a Yoga teacher of all of my students. They teach me a lot about life. I am definatly feeling more settled, rooted, not in the world anymore where everything is about money and time, I see a light when I close my eyes and know that I am on a great, great journey. I am back in Dortmund now, still travelling a lot, just have been to India to study Ashtanga Yoga with David Garrigues and Sharmila Desai and I will go to Bali again next year to find out more about Yoga. I am happy to still have some of my old, very good friends and also that I’ve found ‘new’ friends, doing Yoga or not, that doesn’t matter for me. What matters for me is to be not superficial, to live, to love, to laugh, sharing real stories, being connected.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little story.

Love and light,

Anna