Yoga for me is all of life. From the practical tools to strengthening the mind, body and spirit, to managing our emotions in a way that allows them to flow freely so we can become unstuck.

My name is Darci. I was born to parents who were wild and free. I grew up similarly and surrounded by nature. In fact, I felt closer to nature than I did any human being.

It wasn’t until I took a daunting leap of faith from the consistent weekly paycheck into the inconsistent reality of running my own business of teaching yoga that I would stay in one job for more than two years. Prior to that, for 11 years I wandered most corners of the globe. I worked in bars, hospitality, photography, making and selling jewellery, and teaching drumming and fire twirling on the side. I had fun, but it was indulgent, crazy and chaotic.

For most of my life I have been nomadic and turbulent. I searched by studying different methods including Reiki and NLP, Crystal and Colour Therapy, with leaps across to Floristry and a Masters in Scuba Diving. Although I use a lot of these methods in my current practice, back then nothing really stuck. I needed more science.  More tangible and practical tools, as well as answers to my unrelenting questions.

After an awful car accident I ended up with a shattered body and self-medicating to ease the pain. But the pain from a broken body, spirit and heart started to heal through the practice of yoga. The benefits were crystal clear and I was inspired to make my way to India, yoga’s homeland. I hired an apartment on the beaches of Arambol and nailed my first teacher training in the form of a 30-day intensive. I went in thinking I wasn’t interested in teaching and it was more for developing my personal practice. The start of my yoga teaching journey was inevitable. The message was strong and took its hold. I walked out of that training a teacher, and into a lifelong career.

In 2011, I found my teacher Mark Togni, a Zazen, Ashtanga practitioner and ordained Buddhist monk, with whom I still to this day have monthly private sessions with. It is from him that I learnt and continue to learn what it means to be a great teacher. Being a teacher is not about giving answers. It’s about inviting those who are lost into understanding they have everything within. A great teacher is the one who hands the reins back to those who feel lost. I believe in this unbroken lineage of teacher to student with my whole heart because I feel it quite literally saved my life.

In 2016, alongside my teacher, I would attend my first week long silent retreat, which would further solidify my unshakable faith in this method. It became my yearly ritual, which has hit the pause button while I became a mother to my son.  Even now, the daily method of sitting continues in those early hours before he wakes.

I have facilitated numerous Yoga Teacher Trainings before writing my own.  It is a potent method that cultivates grace, strength and courage and has been passed down a powerful and unbroken lineage, too you.