About Caoimhe

I attended my first yoga class in 1998, but it wasn’t until I tried my first Satyananda Yoga class in Sydney in 2000 that I started to appreciate yoga’s transformative power and follow a spiritual path. Yoga soon became an important part of my life. It helped me to let go of the past, develop greater inner strength, and figure out what it was I wanted to do in life, ie teach yoga!

So in 2003 I travelled to India where I spent 5 months at the renowned Bihar School of Yoga and obtained a Certificate in Yogic Studies. After returning to Ireland I commenced a 2-year yoga teacher training course at The Mandala Yoga Ashram in Wales, finally graduating in 2007. I also obtained  a British Wheel of Yoga accredited teaching diploma.

For me yoga is a way of life, not just a daily practice of asana, pranayama and meditation. I am inspired by my guru Swami Niranjananda Saraswati, the current spiritual head of Satyananda Yoga, and ancient yogic texts such as The Bhagavad Gita and The Upanishads. Yoga has made a huge difference to my life on so many levels. It has helped me to recover from many years of alcohol addiction, and it continues to help me along my path in developing greater wisdom and insight.

I have been teaching for 9 years and I derive great joy in sharing my knowledge and experience of yoga with others. I aim to teach with clarity and kindness, and with a view to enabling students to develop their own home practice or to in some small way bring yoga into their lives.

Over the years I have taught to people with learning disabilities, mental health problems, old age pensioners, former prisoners and teenagers (the most challenging bunch!). I’ve really enjoyed adapting yoga for the varying needs of these different groups. Ultimately yoga is for everyone, not just the very flexible. Years ago when I lived in Australia, I had a wonderful teacher called Swami Ama. She also worked as a yoga therapist and one of her clients was a girl who was paralysed from the neck down. Despite her physical disability she learned many yogic practices, including meditation, yoga nidra and pranayama. Hearing about this made a strong impression on me and I continue to be inspired by the idea that you don’t necessarily have to be able bodied to practice yoga.

In 2007 I received the spiritual name ‘Animesha' from Swami Nischalananda at the Mandala Yoga Ashram.