Long before I started teaching yoga, travelled to India, studied traditional Tantra, or knew any of the Goddesses by name, the word SHAKTI dropped in.
In a sense, I was naive, but my soul already knew what I was here to do, and thus gave me a nudge.
I had just finished my Honours degree in Psychology, after taking a year off my studies to travel to France where I worked as an au pair. I miraculously graduated with first class honours (a miracle because I endured my first and worst heartbreak that year which truly shattered me 
) and had just landed my dream job (at the time!) at a psychology clinic with a global reputation.
I had the role of establishing a charitable trust to support social-emotional health in underpriveleged children. My role was to develop and deliver programs to children, their parents, teachers and health professionals, all the while getting the charity off the ground and running.
I got to travel all around Australia, and teach groups of up to 80 professionals at the ripe age of 21 . This is a chapter in my life I rarely speak of here, but in many ways was super formative…
All the skills I learnt and practiced were super valuable in retrospect in establishing and sharing my own body of work!
Yet at the time I thought my life was about to take a very different trajectory form what it actually did 
And so now you know I haven’t always been an untamed, unconventional, witchy yogini temple priestess 
– well at least I wasn’t aware of it back then.
But back to the story : At this time I finally moved out of my mum’s place & into my first share house in the bohemian Brisbane suburb of West End (back then in 2007 it truly was still Bohemian). I’d just taken up yoga and would ride my bike to class, and practically float home in a blissed out trance.
Shakti was secretly making an inroads into my body & being! And I was completely oblivious to her.
A soul sister & I created the home of our dreams, with regular dress-up parties & extravagant dinners, revelling in having an actual income after years of being university students. We decided we had to give our home a name…
and this was when the word SHAKTI dropped in, out of nowhere, having never heard it before.
I promptly Googled it, and recall this moment vividly as I read the definition, feeling a resounding full body YES.
My housemate was fully on board, and thus our house was named “the Shakti Shack”.
Bless the fellow who moved in with us, because there was too much Shakti in the house for him to handle – not to mention, I didn’t have the skilful means to wield all that shakti back then 
This memory only popped to mind recently, and felt like a very affirming reminder that I am on the right path…
Shakti is a Sanskrit word that means power, life force, energy (of a uniquely Feminine flavour)…the creative energy that pervades all things. 
But translating it is futile in my opinion, because the word itself says everything.
Sanskrit is a vibrational language, meaning that the word itself carries and transmits its essence. 
So, especially if you’re a super energetically sensitive person like me, you will FEEL what the word means when you say it.
What do you feel when you say it???? (Oh and the Sha in Shakti is not said as it is in shack! It’s more like ahhh 
)
P.S. This month marks 4 years since Shakti Yoga was born! At the time I had no idea I’d start a school or run my own training, but life has a wonderful way of surprising us.
Here’s to the evolution, to letting Shakti lead, and to the wisdom of our soul that is always pointing us in the direction we need to go 
