09 Apr Women’s Wellbeing Approach to Yoga with RFY Teacher Lucie Norris
Lucie Norris is a Real Flow Yoga (RFY) Women’s Wellbeing Specialist Yoga teacher. Her love for the water has lead her into teaching SUP yoga (Stand Up Paddle boarding). Yet it is this love for the water which has also inadvertently guided her into her exploration of the divine feminine and a women’s wellbeing approach to yoga practice. The divine feminine is associated with the water element which is expressed as qualities such as flow, fluidity, adaptability, intuition, flexibility, power-through-surrender and creativity.
Lucie first discovered this approach through attending her own teacher Bess Shipside classes. Bess Shipside, Lucie’s teacher is a faculty teacher for Real Flow Yoga whom really embodies the ethos. She is authentic, adaptive and heart focused in her teaching and Lucie finds her really inspirational.
“Something about the way Bess taught was so amazing….her whole vibe…. I’d leave her classes with an amazing feeling…. I wanted to bring the same elements into my own teaching” remarks Lucie.
After experiencing Bess’s classes, Lucie knew where to begin her journey and she immediately signed up for all 3 of Real Flow Yoga’s Women’s Wellbeing Vocational Courses. She first participated in the Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training (YTT), followed by the Postnatal Yoga & Wellbeing YTT and completed with the Well Womb Woman YTT.
“I learned so much on all 3 courses, they hugely complemented each other… and they changed my life”
In this zoom discussion I ask Lucie more about HOW delving into women’s wellbeing yoga has affected her life, her yoga practice and her yoga teaching and career path.
In terms of her teaching and career path, having that specialism within women’s wellbeing allowed her to tap into her authentic voice, it elevated her offerings, enriched her classes and attracted her tribe. She has experienced first-hand how a women’s wellbeing approach to yoga practice is ultimately all about being adaptive, which Lucie says makes yoga accessible for every body, makes it inclusive (for example for menstruating, postnatal, menopausal, pregnant and postnatal women and even also for men!) and also she’s found this approach to be REALLY effective in meeting her student’s needs.
For example, she finds herself making use of the tools and practices learned in pregnancy yoga across a variety of teaching contexts
“the pregnancy transitions are actually really great for getting up and down in a flow on a paddle board”….”..and “if I’m working with a complete beginner or guys that are particularly inflexible, I’ve found that the pregnancy sequences are really effective”.
In her personal yoga practice and her life, what she learned from these RFY Teacher Trainings has facilitated her on her own healing journey and has also been instrumental in initiating her into her own womb wisdom and deepened her personal yoga practice. This approach to yoga continues to sustain her wellbeing throughout her own present pregnancy and also through the new community of women she has since met through teaching yoga in this way.
You can find out more about Lucie and her offerings here