My story.
Hi, this is the story of how I became a Yoga teacher. How I choose this path and how I walked it until now.
My name is Lindsey, the girl behind Flowlinds. Let me take you back in time and rewind to 2019. A year full of change. In 2018 my boyfriend and I traveled to New Zealand for 3 months and when we came back we decided to move in together. By the end of 2019 we already moved twice and were now living in the apartment on the ground floor in the same building we were living in. We just moved and headed off to Bali for the whole month of november. I must inform you that in 2017 until 2019 I started going to the gym, was trying different ‘diets’ and was very unhealthy and never fulfilled or happy with were I was in my life. I had a very bad body image and self-love was not in my dictionary. I was constantly in fight or flight trying to survive and keep my head above water. Working hard to be able to travel again, to ‘escape’ from life.
In Bali everything was good, at least I thought so, if I think back now it was actually very unhealthy to push myself in the gym without eating the foods my body needed, surrounding myself with the energy I deserved. The beginning of this trip already put a lot for me in perspective. You can read why in the Bali post.
When we came back from Bali, that is when I couldn’t fight survival mode anymore. We got home and found out a lot of mold in our apartment. There was no way we could move out straight away se we had to stay 2 more months. Most of the mold was in our bedroom, so we slept in our living room for Christmas, New years, up until my boyfriends mom offered us a room in her apartment. We already started looking into a new place and got very lucky. With a pretty amazing story involved.. In 2018 we were deciding to stay home and move in with each other or to travel to New Zealand with the money we had earned over summer. And the only apartment we visited was the apartment that was available again in 2020. So we straight away told each other ‘this is a sign’ we need to go and live there.. So after living with all this stress, uncertainty in a constant survival mode we finally moved into that apartment in March 2020.
During the months leading up to the move I completely burned myself out. I remember we had planned to go to Disney around my birthday in January. I woke up in the middle of the night a few days before with a panic attack. I couldn’t stop crying, I didn’t know how to breath, I didn’t want to go to Disney, I needed rest in my head. That is what I kept telling myself while staying in patterns of pushing through, at the time I was going to the gym 5 times a week, I worked in a coffee shop and others started to see that I was slowly burning myself out. I started to meditate every now and then after waking up, with an app I found on the app store. I got myself a card deck and took one card every day until we got to move into our new place. One card sticked very close to me and is still hanging on my wall ‘ze geloofde dat ze het kon dus deed ze het’ (she believed she could so she did).
Okay we moved, I was working a lot and even took time off my job to go work a few night shifts somewhere else so I could earn some extra money. Was I thinking about my wellbeing? NO. So here my fire completely burned out. C. was also slowly making its way into Belgium, shops, restaurants were closing, isolation and lockdown became the new ‘how are you’. At the coffee shop where I was working we stayed open for just take away. I was happy, I helped cleaning the restaurant and I could feel this was the ending of a chapter because I had been thinking to do something else but didn’t have a clue what. Until one day I was crying making coffees when I turned my back to everyone, I called in sick for a week and basically cried and slept all week. I started doing Yoga and meditation on a daily basis, just starting gently. Went back to work until we had to close down completely. This could’ve come at a better timing in my journey.
This is when I started to realise how importent my own well-being was. But how could I master to find peace in mind? I started to read about meditation and took a 60 day meditation course with Mindspo. These 60 days changed my life. Every meditation my mind got less heavy, I started to learn about gratitude, journaling, yoga and self-care. Some days were very hard and others felt so easy like nothing was going on. By the power of meditation I healed myself. I read ‘how to heal your life’ from Louise hay as my first self-help book and this brought me into a new skin. I started to see the world around me different. It’s like the saying ‘when things change inside of you things change around you’. During this time I went on long walks by myself, spend a lot of time alone crying and just feeling all the emotions that were present. I went through crazy breakthroughs from my past that needed to be healed. I also quit birth control during this time. This only got me more out of balance. But I knew it was for the better and that I was on the way to heal myself.
After thinking about it for a while I decided to book a Yoga Teacher Training in Bali. Not knowing I couldn’t go because it was planned to be the end of 2020… But the world had other plans! I got the opportunity to attend the training online. Two months online training from my tiny appartement, not really having a clue of what I was actually doing some days but it did work out so well. After two months of hard work, a lot of tears and joy I graduated as a Yoga teacher on the frist of december 2020. This was my dream, I manifested it during all my meditations so I believed I could.
In January 2021 Flowlinds was born. With a lot of dreams, hopes for the future, and uncertainty because what the hell was I doing? I completely quit my job, I was starting on a new job and part time self employed Yoga teacher. !?online?! Because in person classes wasn’t allowed yet.. My first ever class on zoom at 7:30 am there was one girl. If you are reading this, thanks for believing in me. I never gave up and I will always remember it.
2021 started to unfold and we could teach outside, small groups, then bigger groups, indoor classes were also coming back and then all of a sudden a retreat centre in Spain came on my path and I decided to take this leap and jump. I hosted my first 7 day retreat in september `21 with 7 beautiful people. Again if you’re reading this, you are crazy to have trusted me, very grateful you did, I had no clue what I was doing but I did it anyway and it was amazing. the year 2021 passed and we got the opportunity to move to another apartment in the same building we were living… Felt like going back in time, moving in the same building haha it’s a thing apparently.
December 2021 we moved and I also got to open my own studio, safe Yoga space, for all of you underneath our apartment. Something I subconsciously manifested all along.. The year of 2022 has been surprisingly beautiful, I started hosting Moon rituals, got to teach more and more private clients, teach at events, teach on a regular basis with fully booked classes, host a retreat in Portugal and in May 2022 I decided to quit my on the side job and become fully self-employed. Feels surreal still to write this down. That I, the girl who was crying at the coffee machine back in 2019, has become a full time yoga teacher with a pure heart for everything that she does, has healed and is still healing from childhood traumas, is still working hard on her own well-being and deeply loves every day she gets to do what she deserves.
I always put money on my moodboards, not only because I manifest more money into my life but to remind me I am worthy of everything my heart desires. Feeling worthy of your desires comes from a place of gratitude for your past, present and future. Being in the here and now, acknowledging where you have hiked towards.
From this story, this life path, I teach. I teach energy, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, … So every class you will ever follow with me is always based on true events that come from within me.
With Love, thanks for reading my story.
A story to be continued…