From a very young age, I was endlessly curious about love.
Why do people give love so differently—sometimes far more, sometimes far less than others? I remember my mother once saying about our elderly neighbor whose wife had passed away, “He just loved her so much.”
It made me wonder: did he love her more than my grandparents loved each other, and if so, why? What is the barometer of love, and who sets it? Is there really a way to love a lot or a little? How does it stop, and who decides?
I grew up in an environment that primed me to help people. I had to be finely tuned to my surroundings, walking on eggshells, some would say. But truly, the greatest catalyst of my life was the pain of growing up in an unsafe home. It sharpened my awareness and sensitivity not only to my surroundings but to the energy of others—something I am deeply grateful for today.
Through my study of people and behavior, I’ve learned that hurt people hurt people. When we don’t step into the space of healing, learning to love ourselves through adversity, heartbreak, and disappointment, we unconsciously pass our pain to others. This is why I am so passionate about working with matters of the heart. I have felt the deep sting of a broken heart aimed at me in anger and vengeance, and I have also been the one to deliver such harm. Both experiences have shown me that pain, when left unhealed, becomes a weapon but when met with love, it has the power to become medicine.
Yoga became that bridge for me. The meeting point between my lifelong curiosity about love, my deep study of relationships, and the quiet observations of human connection that had always fascinated me. I remember crawling into my first Vinyasa yoga class 15 years ago, desperate to touch the center of the grief I had carried for most of my life. The voice in my head was loud, insistent, and cruel. But over the next hour, something began to shift. As I opened my body and felt my breath move through me, something miraculous happened; light cracked in. The love I felt in that moment turned my world upside down. It was the doorway to a life devoted to healing and to loving myself as deeply as I could.
My hope for every student is simple: to feel the light return, to remember their worth, and to know they are never alone in that remembering.
