The Body
The side door
Why the small reason you came might be the only one that was ever going to work
Back in autumn 2016 I was still a fairly new teacher, just starting to find my feet in the niche world of 1-1 sessions. A guy came to me wanting a bit of support over the winter; he’d struggled with low mood every year for as long as he could remember, and yoga felt like something small and manageable to try.
He ended up working with me for over a decade, and did some of the deepest identity work of his life.
The contrast between the modest intention and the profound outcome is something I’ve come to recognise as one of the most consistent patterns in my work. I’ve started calling it the side door.
Nobody comes in through the front
In eleven years, almost nobody has arrived saying what they were really looking for. They come through other entrances entirely:
- The stressed-out man whose yoga-loving wife bought him a class
- The woman who didn’t want to burn out and end up on sick leave
- The mum who rang me on behalf of her exhausted son
- The guy with a frozen shoulder
- The man whose GP had suggested yoga for his anxiety
- And the many, many people who simply wanted to find a way to move that felt good
All of them ended up working with me for years. All of them achieved what they came for … and found something far more significant along the way.
I can usually sense the moment something shifts. Stressed-out shoulders dropping a couple of inches, or a breath that goes somewhere it hasn’t been in a long time. It can be something less tangible but unmistakable; a change in the quality of presence in the room. It’s almost always accompanied by some version of woah, this feels so good – that look of quiet surprise that something so simple could have such a profound effect.
It’s the moment a person actually arrives back into their body.
The side door isn’t the wrong entrance. It might be the only one that was ever going to work.
Why we rarely choose transformation directly
We rarely choose transformation head-on. We stumble into it through something smaller and safer; better fitness, less stress, a frozen shoulder that needs sorting. These feel like accessible entry points, and they are.
Nobody has ever arrived at one of my sessions announcing they want to embark on a journey of self-actualisation, even if that’s exactly what they get.
My own side door (spoiler alert: it was spite)
I started yoga very reluctantly. I had all sorts of unfounded beliefs that it was too easy, too slow and not for me. I urgently needed something for my mental health, and my partner had been gently nudging me towards my mat for months.
What actually got me there was … a snowboarding instructor telling me I had no core.
I showed up to prove him wrong. I got abs. I also changed my entire life – confidence, self-worth, resilience, self-compassion, strength, softness, friendships, adventures, mental recovery, and a career that eleven years on I still get excited about every day.
Alright, so … maybe my side door was spite. But it led me home.
If you’re not sure what you’re looking for yet
We don’t always know what we’re looking for. But something new can be the beginning of a life-changing journey.
If something brought you here today and you’re not quite sure what yet, that’s enough. That’s always been enough.
COACHING
You were never meant to choose between your ambition and yourself.
Nervous system coaching for the wired, the stretched thin and the exhausted
If you’re holding it all together on the outside but running on fumes underneath, this is where that changes. Homecoming is 1:1 coaching built around your body and not just your mind, whatever your life looks like right now.
What we work on together:
- Calming a nervous system that’s forgotten how to come down
- Reconnecting your everyday life with what actually matters to you
- Growing your capacity, so the same life stops feeling like too much
Not ready for coaching? Start here.
The Burnout Blueprint is a free 10-minute self-audit that shows you where stress is really showing up, and what to do about it today.
