Meet Robin

Summary of yoga background

Founder and Director of Shift. UK’s youngest yoga teacher in 2016.

Trained in: 200hr Sivananda Hatha yoga, 50hr mindfulness CPD, 100hr CPD teen yoga and 40hr CPD in prison yoga and trauma sensitive yoga teaching. Currently training with yoga in healthcare alliance. Certifed in courses accredited with Yoga Alliance UK, Independent Yoga Network, British Wheel of Yoga.

Teaching style: I love designing unique practices for people and using intentions and affirmations. I specialises in yoga for teenagers but have a wealth of experience in teaching all ages! I find it rewarding to make yoga accessible to people who are new or unsure on yoga. I’m most interested in the mental health benefits of yoga and my classes have a holistic approach.

Further experience and accreditations: Enhanced DBS, first aid trained, fully insured. Experienced in working with secondary and primary pupils, training adult educators to share yoga, leading small teams, mentoring young people and adults and public speaking.

My Story

I started the Shift Movement after discovering at 12 years old  how meditation could change my life.

I was in the Scottish Highlands with my Dad during the summer holidays. I was at a low point in life and knew I needed to change. During our two-week trip my Dad showed me this diagram, showing the cycle of how change happens, the model showed how it all started with self awareness, then self control, then your self confidence develops and then self development and change occurs, this inspired me. With his guidance it became clear to me that I needed to become more self aware in order to change my way of thinking if I wanted to find more enjoyment in my life.

I committed to myself and practised meditation every morning and even though it took some time to break some stubborn habits and limiting beliefs, I did it! And my goodness it was worth it!

As my personal practice at home progressed, I took up a 10 week mindfulness training with Dario Travaini, joined by my Mum, this sparked interest in personal development and how mindfulness could be used to heal relationships. At this time, I also started developing my yoga practice with a DVD I played most mornings before school.

I became the youngest yoga instructor in the UK by completing 200 hours of Yoga Instruction with ‘Master instructor’ Charlotta Martinus at Universal Yoga in Bath, Somerset. Once my training was completed, and while I was doing my A-levels, I started ‘Bliss by Robin’ to deliver community classes for young people. On top of this, I ran adventurous yoga and white-water rafting retreats during my summer holidays. I delivered workshops and spoke at the All-Party-Parliamentary-Group on Yoga in Society’  in the House of Lords, London and the ‘Yoga in Healthcare’ conference. I am a teacher on the Movement for Modern Life platform and received a Princess Diana Award.

A local school asked me to help work with challenging students to help them engage through movement. This then led to teaching yoga classes in prison. It was, and still is, really important to be authentic and go on new courses to deepen and refresh one’s learning. I completed an additional 300 hours of training in trauma yoga, prison yoga, yoga for young people and yoga in healthcare.

Through my weekly teen yoga club in Stroud, I even inspired the next generation of youngest yoga teachers - my primary school friend Flo. Flo completed her 200 hours aged 15 and is now an instructor and runs her own business ‘Floga’. Together Flo and I worked together and came up with the idea to train yoga people in short courses so they could then teach their peers. In 2019 Active Gloucestershire funded a pilot program at Bournside School where we trained a small group of young people to share yoga with their peers.

Robin’s ‘Shift’ art exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral, capturing movement

At the same time as running my business, I was also going to art college on an ‘art foundation.’ I made a large installation piece, aptly named Shift, originally exhibited in Gloucester Cathedral. The piece also included me instructing yoga classes in front of my art. This sparked an idea,  for created the opportunity to run  to participate in a week-long festival on Art and Wellbeing in Stroud where my art composed the background for an interactive experience bringing together for local artists, practitioners and more people to deliver their yoga classes, display their mindful photography, qigong, art classes, and even five primary schools that came for an entire day of art and wellbeing activities which culminated in presenting their Art Award. Read more about the art project here

I was handed a challenge when travelling in Australia as the pandemic hit. Without the ability to go back to the UK I was forced to adjust and this process became a true testament to how my yoga practice has enabled me to handle life’s surprises. Being able to adapt to my new situation while continuing to teach courses online with the help of Active Gloucestershire who funded my new virtual yoga classes. My boyfriend, Simon, even set up a mobile studio on the side of his Toyota Hilux Ute while we travelled around Australia on an eight month road trip.  Click here to see my instagram post with my set up on the road trip.

Mobile yoga studio whilst on road trip

Inside the mobile yoga studio for online yoga

It is amazing to me that with my commitment of one small change every day – I have changed my whole lifestyle, how I feel about myself, and how I interact with others. I am a completely different person than I was on that trip to Scotland. Now I enjoy witnessing others who are part of the Shift Movement make positive transformations in their lives.

Post pandemic and traveling around Australia, I now spend time in both the UK and Tasmania, Australia where I run Shift Arts & Wellbeing LTD with a small team based in the UK. We have worked with hundreds of educators in schools throughout the whole of Gloucestershire and are developed other services such as community events and classes alongside our online wellbeing course, equipping educators with tools to bring yoga and mindfulness into the classroom.