My fascination with yoga began in 2001 upon completing a solo bicycle journey from my native Ireland to India. On arriving in India for reasons I couldn’t fully fathom, I found myself deeply drawn to the people and traditions. It appeared to me that they, through gentler means, had come to a similar understanding of the world as I had after nine contemplative months pedalling mountains and deserts in solitude. 

On a subsequent trip to India, my intention had been to go to Goa and party, but en route I casually dropped into a Yoga class that stopped me dead in my tracks.  A lifetime of trapped emotions began to flow out, a process that went on for some months. It became obvious that this was what I needed and I quickly forgot about Goa. I have practiced some form of Yoga every day since.

 I decided to quit my work in Artificial Intelligence and website building. I couldn’t overcome the feeling that despite all its so called advances, I.T. did not improve life experience. Through Yoga. my subjective life experience did improve. I began to develop and trust my intuition, an intelligence that was no longer artificial. 

On returning from that trip I found myself alone and jobless in a mountain cabin in the Asturian  forest. For two years I was virtually always in silence and undisturbed by people or technology. When not tending to the vegetable garden or foraging, I experimented with various forms of yoga and meditation endlessly. A sense of wellbeing like I had never before experienced grew in me, and little by little with it, the desire to share it. That cabin where I practiced is now the shala of Asturias Yoga. I still practice there every morning

I began to practice Ashtanga Vinyasa on meeting Kamal Singh in India in 2008.  Kamal’s mastery of the practice inspired me deeply. I drawn by Ashtanga’s challenging dynamic and its obvious benefits for adventure sport activities (such as rock climbing, mountain biking and surfing) to which I had been addicted. I now understand that those adventure sports can bring us into full presence and that that is their addiction. Yoga is a practice which trains us to come into full awareness without the need for any special situation or danger.

 After years of travelling to India to practice with him, I completed teacher training under Kamal’s guidance. On that training I met Sunil Sharma, who refined my understanding of Yoga Philosophy and Pranayama. For eight subsequent years I practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga daily as an unbreakable resolution (“tapa,” in yoga), no matter what condition my body or mind.

 The Vipassana (Insight) Meditation tradition (as taught by S.N. Goenka) has also been fundamental part of my path. During the numerous 10-day retreats I have participated in, I discovered its essence to be the same as that of Yoga, The practice however does not require flexibility or physical strength, simply consciousness. It is such a fundamental and direct technique that, when the mind is trained, it can be applied in any situation. 

 My goal as a teacher is to use Yoga techniques to open people’s insight, to enable them to perceive their intuition clearly and thereby free themselves from the domination of thought. To this end I have created Saoirse Yoga, in which students learn to develop their own most effective personal Yoga practice and to experience how it relates to the liberation of meditation.

They say that when you truly love an activity, you want to share it. This is how I feel about yoga.