It all started a couple of years back, after the pandemic and lockdown. I started my WellWoman workshop to give women a space to practice yoga face to face, surrounded by other women in an atmosphere full of compassion and joy.
Most classes were still on zoom, the world was still traumatised by these fairly dramatic events when many women had to bear the load of being not only workers from home, mothers and wives/partners but also teachers, educators for their children. They needed some respite, a place where they could look after themselves and be looked after. A place to gather, exercise, laugh, push and support each other.
My clients, my friends came along to these workshops. And they were fun and fulfilling. But they were never entirely full, it was hard to get the word out.
That is when sisterhood in the shape of my friend Claire Caminade Came and helped. She is a business person, she had been working in the corporate world all her life and decided that she was going to help me. She entirely re-designed my website, which is not her job at all originally, took me by the hand and pushed me to organise myself, to think a little bit more rationally so my yoga business would grow. It is slow, there are set backs, but it is growing. And it is filling me with joy.
And then one day, she told me there was a space to rent in Muswell Hill where I had been looking to do a class for a while. But I had not yet found the right place with the right atmosphere. So I went to see that place to rent. They wanted someone to take over the running, the managing of the room, and that’s what it was, a room with very white walls and a lovely albeit dirty glass brick wall in an alley in the heart of Muswell Hill.
My heart skipped a beat when I heard that and I thought oh wow, I’d love that. And then immediately dismissed it as too ambitious, too big, too much for little me. I told Claire it was not going to work. But I kept going back to it, thinking what if… only to brush it under the carpet because… how could I!?!
Not long after, Claire called me very excited to say that she had had the most amazing and outrageous thought… what if we both took over the managing of the studio? She had been made redundant a few months back, following health problems and did not want to go back to the corporate world. She knew she wanted to help and coach women find their full business potential. And I think I was her pet project 😍.
So after her proposal to manage a studio that we would have to build from scratch, I said yes then no in my head a few dozen times before accepting because somehow I knew I had no choice. This was my chance, my opportunity. And I was scared, very scared, but I knew I had Claire, next to me, or better said behind me, pushing me to get over my fears, my self doubt.
I have cried a couple of times over it, wondering what the hell had I got myself into, I have nearly backed out in the summer because I was trying to convince myself that it was not what I wanted to do. Although pretty much everyone was saying how wonderful and amazing this project was! So end of August came and September and I am still in it and the project is becoming very real... The fears subsiding little by little and the excitement growing and growing. The studio is starting to look like a beautiful, warm place where we will feel protected, happy, safe. A special place by women for women.
I don’t think I would have even started to dream about it had it not been for Claire and all the wonderful women, my sister, my mum, my friends, my clients, surrounding me, believing in me. Because sometimes, have you noticed how it is the others who believe in you more than yourself?
L'Atelier Yoga opens on 1st October.
I don’t know how successful it will be, but so far it has been a wonderful adventure, a human discovery. And I look forward to continuing my partnership with Claire, Michelle and Twanna, and starting our collaboration with Clélia, Marielle, Sue, Jo and more pretty amazing yoga teachers.
I will endeavour to look after our community of teachers and clients the way I have been looked after!
So… long live Sisterhood and l’Atelier yoga!
And now, like at the Oscars, special thanks to Kate for telling me that fear was healthy and normal, to Claire, Corinne, Myriam and Josephine for supporting me, to Julia for being such a wonderful friend and to John!! for supporting me always, no matter what! and to everyone else, sorry, my head is full and I apologise to the ones I missed (I told you it would be like at the Oscars!!).
Je vous embrasse!
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