Yoga is not a trend.

An ode to 20 years of yoga.

The year is 2006.

You’re in your final year of high school. Your friends convince you to attend a Bikram yoga class.

You discover a whole new way to move your body and experience deep relaxation. It feels incredible.

The year is 2008.

You move through several life crises, including two trips to the ER.

An alternate life path is calling. You drop out of university, of what you thought was going to be your dream career. You let go.

Casual yoga classes anchor you to the ground. Music becomes your medicine.

The year is 2011.

You’ve thrived in your new degree and graduate at the top of your class. Some important relationships break down, making space for a new era. You learn to listen to nudges, and follow curiosities. You backpack solo through South-East Asia and sit in reverence with Buddhist monks in Bhutan.

The year is 2012.

You experience a richness in life you’ve never felt before. You learn to trust the process and hold on for the ride of your life as you start your business career on the other side of the world. Lifelong bonds form. You introduce the guy you’re dating to snowboarding and yoga...

The year is 2016.

You marry that guy, three times. The year of love.

For the past few years, weekly yoga classes have (only just) maintained the thread of connection between mind, body and spirit. You work too hard, play too hard and drink too much. But life feels so exciting.

The year is 2017.

You get sick again. A big fat stop sign from the universe. You correct course and eliminate animal products from your diet. You resonate with the yogic principle ahimsa - non-violence toward all living beings, including self.

The year is 2018.

You begin floristry study, taking weekend classes while you reluctantly continue your professional career. You convince your husband to spend a week in Cambodia meditating at a rustic village retreat. It’s life changing in itself... and then you find out you’re pregnant.

Your pregnancy alters your life perspective. You learn hypnobirthing techniques, and practice yoga asana several times a week at the cosiest Sydney studio. You feel held and prepared.

The year is 2019.

You become a mother. A family. You’re a qualified florist. You pack up your city life, move into a bus and begin travelling. You practice yoga every day but feel a little lost without a regular studio. The good views somewhat make up for it. By chance, you pick up an Eckhart Tolle book (A New Earth). It awakens something deep within.

The year is 2020.

You begin working for an event florist, falling in love with weddings, venues, and Tasmania.

You are forced to stop travelling and end up bunkering down in an idyllic mud-brick cottage. You deepen your self-practice. You finally understand money magnetism. You graciously accept a severance package, and two years after going on maternity leave, allow yourself to grieve your corporate career. You shed an old identity. You hike, a lot, baby in tow.

One day while winding your way home from town, you feel a new soul connect with you. Her name comes through so clearly, like a lightning bolt. You fall pregnant a month or two later.

The year is 2021.

You return to Queensland to avoid being seperated from family during ongoing border restrictions. You feel deeply connected to spirit during this pregnancy, more so than the last. You have the time and space to honour and nourish your body with asana, meditation, ocean swims, sunshine, food and rest. Her birth is long but light, fun, and then explosive. That sums up your daughter. You receive your first reiki attunement, babe in arms.

The year is 2022.

You’re on the road again, travelling as a family of four. You begin casually studying Ayurveda. Your morning routine becomes your salvation. You move to Europe, buy a shitty motorhome and have a great time exploring Italy and France but realise buslife is better suited to Australia. You read the Law of Attraction, and many, many things make sense. You start your YouTube channel, filming ambient nature soundscapes.

You work through your dark night of the soul in the depths of German winter. You begin your Yoga Teacher Training. You embody everything you learn, in real time. It saves you.

The year is 2023.

You begin teaching yoga to other expats in your cosy home studio. It makes you come alive. You witness wild spring blooms like never before. You build deep human connections and experience big creative surges. You write, illustrate and publish a children’s yoga book, before moving back to Australia, and buslife.

The year is 2024.

Your sunrise asana and meditation practice anchors your days on the road. You film in the most incredible landscapes. You call in community, and end up travelling with your soul fam for two months. You spend a month in Bali, and pull away from social media. You begin studying forest bathing and nature therapy. By the end of the year you completely burn out from constant movement and travel planning. Yoga helps you accept this, and allow the process to unfold as it needs to.

The year is 2025.

You have just spent a nourishing two months in German winter, visiting family for Christmas. You complete your Yin Yoga teacher training and find it deeply nourishing and restorative. You feel your creative spark return and begin writing on Substack, revealing a beautiful community of nature lovers and deep thinkers. As you travel down Australia’s East coast during one of the wettest autumns and winters on record, you’re deep in the portal, feeling yourself being pulled toward a new version of life. The mountains hold you through it all.

Parenting becomes increasingly challenging and your relationship suffers as the family outgrows your beloved tiny home on wheels. You grieve the end of buslife.

You land in Tasmania and after the initial excitement, then overwhelm, you move into a beach shack with the most incredible views. You re-learn how to function as a family, and establish routines and social structure. You begin to reconnect with and love your body again.

The year is 2026.

Your morning routine is still sacred. You can feel your visions turning into reality, and the process is just as exciting to witness as the dream itself. You’re drawn to create floral art and begin pressing and framing wedding bouquets. You really want to teach yoga but feel nervous after a long break. You begin your children’s yoga teacher training.

You prepare to monetise your soundscapes in a new way and to share your digital business expertise with the local community. You are ready to integrate all aspects of yourself - personal, professional, creative, spiritual, wild - and show up as a multifaceted being.

You incorporate yoga nidra into most afternoons, and continue to swim in the ocean and walk barefoot on the beach every chance you get (which delights you because you had expected those pleasures to end with buslife.)

You fall in love again. With each other, with your family, with the island.

tbc...

Yoga is not a trend. It’s a way of life. I’m here for the journey - a forever student.

Narrating the past 20 years of my life in second person was oddly cathartic.

Stick around to find out what happens next ✌️

Stay curious and kind,

Simone

I’m here to rewild the human spirit—gently restoring joy, presence and a deeper connection to nature in ways that feel easy to weave into life as it is.

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