Over the following years my relationship with yoga remained physical. Travelling from one country to another became once again normality. My passion for snowboarding directed me back to Italy, my home at heart. After a beautiful winter season, kitesurfing in Sardegna was soon to come.

Far into the season while planning my transfer to Mexico, I had yet another breakdown by far the greatest I had ever had. Being once again unemployed was not an option for me. Frustrated and confused, it hit me so incredibly hard how negative my self-image had been my entire life; judgemental, mean, scarred. No self love, no self worth, small and scared, always desperately trying to get other people's approval and attention, clinging constantly to external situations to find some ease.

So in a moment of pure desperation and deep suffering, I broke. I stopped eating, spent endless nights unable to fall asleep. There was nothing in front of me. No future I could envision. It was all empty. To gain a bit of self value and control over my life I signed up for a 200 HR YTT in Bali. By doing so I could then work as a yoga teacher in Mexico. 

As soon as I left Sardegna, the ground beneath my feet caved. Shattered as I was, it became very clear how unhealthy my relationships had been. One more than the other. But it was meant to happen. It all made perfect sense. Without crashing so hard I would have never chosen to do a teacher training. And I would have never found my purpose in life; teaching yoga. The soul knows, it always knows. I was just not paying attention. Until life finally knocked me over. And I had to listen. 

My life had evolved around extreme sports, being overactive and far too analytical, so the idea of teaching yoga was absurd. The gap was too big and uncomfortable the space as a figure in the spotlight. But I needed a solution. 

Having completed my 200 HR I went on from one teacher training to the other; SUP yoga, pregnancy & children's yoga and yin yoga. This sudden immense curiosity to learn was like an unbroken energy line moving me forward. 

I love teaching. And when I started teaching there was no doubt. Fear of realizing how much I did not know combined with excitement for knowledge guided me from one yoga experience to the other, from one country to the other, without leaving any room for doubt whether I should teach or not. What I was learning, I wanted to share. 

Meditation was the game changer. With meditation I started picking up the broken pieces of my reality. I went from living on the surface to digging deep into my past, into myself. All the way back to my childhood traumas; being separated from my parents for 1,5 years causing significant abandonment issues to a grown age. Layers and layers of unprocessed issues in very dark places of my own mind. My thoughts were so loud. But I wanted to discover what was hiding behind closed eyes and in the stillness of the breath, the mind, the heart and the light of the soul. As I committed in a fuller way, progressively dedicating more time to self practice, I started to change. Things slowed down. I slowed down. There was more space, more freedom of expression, more love. While judgements and my oh so ever present self defence mechanisms and aggressive reactions subsided until eventually dissipating. As I started to open up to these changes, life started to support my choices. Yoga gave me a second chance. Meditation gave me a second chance. And with meditation, I win.

It's hard sometimes to define what specifically it is about yoga that leads you to transform. It's a subtle change that happens in time. A slow, systematic purification of the nervous system. Yoga is freeing. In so many ways.