meet Kristin
I had a difficult adolescence. Although I come from what is essentially a loving family, like many, it has its share of difficulties, including pervasive mental illness. In my teens, I turned to alcohol and cannabis to numb my way through low self-esteem and crippling anxiety. I was bulimic and anorexic. I used partying to feel normal – or perhaps to not feel at all. I did try to ask for help at one point, but my family’s own issues meant they were either unwilling or unable to respond. So, I continued a path of self-sabotage and self-destruction.
For the most part, I managed to hide my pain from others. I looked like a normal teen and received good marks at school. But in my second year in university, I hit rock bottom, and I didn’t think I would be able to find my way out. I had to do something.
And I believed I had the power to transform my life, no matter what it took.
I tried therapy, which was fine, but I didn’t feel like anyone I talked to really understood who I was or what I was going through. I was looking for meaning.
One day, on a whim, I stumbled into an ashtanga yoga class while at the gym. Having been a dancer when I was younger, I appreciated the deliberate movements that synchronised with the rhythm of my breath. At the end of the class, my mind felt more at ease, and although I didn’t fully immerse myself in the practice until a few years later, my twice-monthly drop-ins to that class set me on a path of self-discovery.
Over the last 25 years, I’ve been on a journey of ascension, exploring the depths of consciousness and the path of awakening. This has led me to study and practice multiple mind/body/spiritual disciplines from both the East and the West, including Tara Brach, Gil Fronsdale, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Pema Chödrön, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg. I have also been influenced by the works of Byron Katie, Brené Brown, Michael Singer, Martha Beck, Leon VanderPol, and Peter Levine.
I gave birth to my first daughter in 2009, a profound journey that pushed me to reclaim my personal authority and find a deep, abiding trust in myself. I trained and work as a birth doula and childbirth education mentor, witnessing the awesome power of pregnant and birthing people as they return to their personal wisdom and power. I have also trained as a transformational life coach and provide support and guidance to women as they navigate powerful thresholds and rites of passage.
I incorporate a wide variety of tools in my work including neurolinguistic programming (NLP), embodied movement, EFT (tapping), energy work, meditation, and other mind-body-spirit (MBS) tools to elicit profound and lasting change. I am deeply committed to my own awakening and that of my clients as they step into a new sense of wholeness, purpose, and fulfilment.
Transformational Life Coach
For years, I have spoken with people at women thresholds who are craving a deeper exploration of what it means to be human. They are seeking deep alignment and sense the presence inner experience that is waiting to arise. This inner experience elevates the conversation from a transactional level to a transformational level, so that coaching is not about shifts in power and wealth, but rather transformation at the level of being.
Various moments in our life can be initiation points for such a journey. For some, it has been a persistent longing or call from within. For others, it may be the death of a loved one or relationship, an illness, or some other experience often described as a “dark night of the soul”. Often women emerging from childbirth find themselves in the throes of an identity shift that can be simultaneously exalting (“I can’t believe I have this amazing small being in my arms!”) and frightening (“Who am I now?”). Deep Transformational Coaching is a journey we take together to explore the undefinable from a place of curiosity, consciousness, and compassion.
Whether you find yourself at the threshold of initiation; in the depths of the unknown; or integrating into a new paradigm of conscious existence, I can help.
Doula, Birthkeeper, Childbirth Education Mentor, and Birth Story Listener
I am a doula, an educator, a mentor, and an independent traditional birthkeeper: a guardian and protector of the sacred passage of childbirth. The home water births of my own two daughters, and the powerfully vulnerable and courageous births I have witnessed, have led me to view pregnancy and childbirth as natural and creative processes that have the potential to empower, enlighten, and transform. I work internationally but am based in York, England.
I moved to the UK in July 2021 to pursue midwifery studies after being a doula for 12 years. Five months into my course, I decided that I could no longer continue studying and practising midwifery in a way that was so out of alignment with how I view the transformative journey of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. I made the difficult but incredibly empowering decision to leave the course and embark on a very unconventional, yet incredibly authentic, path. I enroled in Indie Birth Midwifery School and started my studies to be a Birthing from Within mentor and Birth Story Medicine listener.
Through the years, my work as a birthworker has also integrated my studies in cultural birthing practices around the world, women's nutrition, herbalism for women, and ceremony and ritual for the childbearing year/rites of passage. I am a Birth Story Medicine Listener and am also completing my training to become a Birthing from Within mentor.
As a holistic, trauma-informed, full-spectrum doula, I work with pregnant and birthing people from all backgrounds and life experiences, including LGBTQ families, single mothers, and families who do not typically have access to perinatal support services. I am committed to ensuring all women and birthing people have access to a birth doula and breaking down the barriers that prevent women from having the information and support they deserve as they make the courageous and profound journey into motherhood. I also have experience working with families who have experienced loss, birth trauma, and pregnancy release. 10% of all proceeds are put towards am accessibility fund to ensure support for all who desire and find the need for the nonjudgmental, compassionate, experienced presence of a doula.
Yoga, Meditation, and Embodied Movement
As a yoga teacher, I emphasise yoga as a contemplative path that has the ability to awaken the hearts and minds of those who are willing to make the journey. My own journey began in 1994, when I immersed myself in my practice as a way to holistically address the effects of scoliosis and find a sense inner peace to counter the nagging voice of daily anxiety. I was tired of being a tightly wound ball of back pain that reacted to life from a place of fear. My yoga mat - and soon after, my meditation cushion - became a haven where I could safely explore my habitual patterns and navigate the highs and lows of my internal landscape. Over the next several years, my yoga practice would be a place of reckoning and homecoming as I moved through periods of depression, figuring out my identity as a mother, and international moves that found me in a new country without friends or any family other than my husband and children. I have studied with a variety of notable teachers from a number of traditions, including Anusara, Iyengar, Kundalini, Ashtanga, and Kriya Yoga. My practice has evolved through the years, but what has never changed it my appreciation of yoga’s profound generosity.
I received my initial certification in Hatha and Kundalini Yoga in 2004, and in 2007 was initiated into the Aghora Yoga tradition of Agoreshwar Bhagwan Ram and my teacher, Baba Harihar Ramji on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, India. Over the years, my practice and teaching has been informed by my studies with many exceptional teachers including John Schumacher, John Friend, Donna Farhi, Tias Little, Tara Brach, Gil Fronsdale, and Yashoda Devi Ma. I am also devoted student and offer deep bows to my Kriya Yoga teacher, Yogiraj SatGurunath Siddhanath.
Over the last several years, my personal practice and teaching have evolved into a more embodied practice. I have found somatics (as taught by Thomas Hanna) to be integral in my journey to wholeness and health through self-discovery. In somatic practices, our own moving, living bodies are the ‘lab’ through with we learn about ourselves. Somatic movement practices may include learning to notice and repattern habitual ways of moving that may be causing strain, stress, injury, or a range of other physical and emotional issues. As we become aware of and learn to consciously re-pattern habitual ways of moving, we activate more of our own innate body/mind intelligence. This begins a process of self-inquiry and learning that empowers us toward more ongoing, sustainable self-care and moves us towards greater mind-body-spirit (MBS) integration.
Under the tutelage of my teacher Lisa Peterson, I am training to become a Somatic Exercise Coach (SEC) and now incorporate somatic movements into my regular asana practice and teaching. My classes, while at times a bit cheeky, include a nurturing, lighthearted blend of somatic movement; mindful, alignment-focused asana; Eastern philosophy and spirituality; breathwork; and meditation. I currently teach private sessions, small group classes, and workshops throughout the UK.
