My story
When people meet me now, they know me as a yoga teacher, personal trainer and wellbeing coach, but my working life has been anything but a straight line. I’ve done so many different things over the years, and looking back, I can see that each part of my life has somehow contributed to what I do today.
My first experience of working with people actually started when I was only 16, when I volunteered in a school. Then, at 20, I went off to Japan and taught English to children. I was young, adventurous and probably had no idea at the time quite how many different directions my working life was going to take.
In my 20s I worked in importing and exporting with my partner, but this was also when fitness first became a real part of my working life. I became an aerobics instructor in my mid-20s, back in the days when aerobics classes were enormous fun, energetic and very different from the fitness world we know today. I loved movement, music and the energy of teaching a room full of people.
I then trained as a personal trainer in my 30s, so my relationship with fitness actually goes back a very long way. But life moved on and, like many women, I didn’t follow one perfectly planned career path.
In my 30s and 40s I moved into a completely different world, working in furniture sales and interior design. I’ve always had a creative side, so I loved beautiful spaces, colour, homes and design. At the same time, my interest in health, nutrition and the more spiritual side of life was becoming increasingly important to me, and I studied Nutritional Healing.
My involvement with Subud also became a significant part of my life. I became a spiritual helper and became involved in organising and running retreats. I had actually worked on my very first Subud retreat when I was only 15, so once again something I’d encountered very young came back into my life many years later.
And then there’s possibly the most unusual entry on my CV.
For a time, my partner and I had a falconry school.
We taught people how to handle and fly falcons and other birds of prey. It was completely different from anything else I’ve done, but I loved being outside, working with animals and sharing something extraordinary with other people. I’ve always loved nature, and that connection with the natural world is still a huge part of who I am today.
Then, around the age of 50, another chapter began.
I trained as a yoga teacher.
Yoga brought together so many things I had been interested in throughout my life — movement, breathing, the body, meditation, spirituality and wellbeing. I began teaching and continued adding to my knowledge through further study and training.
I also returned to personal training. I’d originally trained decades earlier, but coming back to it later in life gave me a completely different perspective. I wasn’t the same woman who had taught aerobics in her 20s.
I had lived.
I understood much more about bodies, confidence, stress, ageing, recovery and how complicated our relationship with exercise can sometimes become.
I worked in fitness and yoga at places including the Greenway Hotel and later at Reset Gym, while continuing to teach yoga. Over the years I’ve also studied breathwork, meditation, NLP, EFT, Reiki, Ayurveda and other areas of wellbeing that interested me.
Eventually all those different threads came together when I opened my own yoga and wellbeing studio in Cheltenham.
When I look back now, I don’t see my career as a collection of completely unrelated jobs anymore. Teaching children in Japan taught me about communication. Sales and interior design developed my confidence and creativity. Retreats taught me about creating spaces where people can stop and reconnect with themselves. Falconry strengthened my love of nature. Yoga taught me to understand movement and the relationship between the body and mind. Personal training taught me about strength, progression and what our bodies are capable of.
And perhaps most importantly, getting older myself has changed the way I teach.
At 59, I’m not talking to women over 45 from something I’ve read in a textbook. I’m living this stage of life alongside them. I want to stay strong, mobile, healthy, curious and full of energy as I get older too.
My career hasn’t followed a straight line.
But perhaps it wasn’t supposed to.
From teaching English in Japan to aerobics classes, interior design, nutritional healing, spiritual retreats, flying falcons, yoga, personal training and finally opening my own studio, somehow all those different paths have brought me here.
And I think they’ve made me a much more interesting teacher because of it.
Selena
Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher & Wellbeing Coach
In Flow Wellbeing Studio, Cheltenham
