Emma Vredeveld

- Flowy, creative, inspired - that’s how I would describe my yoga classes. With my background in dance, I feel like vinyasa yoga was meant for my body. I love following the steady flow of body and breath as everything else falls away, knowing that all I need to be is here. Cause ultimately, that’s what yoga is all about for me: waking up out of the mind and snapping back into the body. Being present in this moment. Right here. Right now. 

Even as a child, I was constantly moving my body and I soon fell in love with dance. While creative movement made me very happy, dance also made me more perfectionistic. There is a right way to do the steps and I was definitely striving for perfection. But when I discovered yoga, I learned about what I call “the other way” of movement: it is directed inwards instead of outwards. There’s no audience out there, but instead there is that crucial internal dialogue between body, mind and soul waiting for you to explore. Yoga taught me to think less of the result and to make the process the reward. To swap perfectionism for joy.

During my job as an English teacher at a high school, I had a burnout. I struggled a lot during this time, but it was also very clear to me that this could be the beginning of something new. It felt so natural to use yoga to find my way out of this burnout. Slowly but surely I started to build a softer life, focussing on self care, with yoga as my firm foundation.