Flo was a regular contributor to Australian Yoga Life magazine from 2001 until it ceased print production in 2020. She is currently registered with Yoga Australia at the highest possible level of teaching experience. She is also a registered Yoga Therapist with AAYT and Yoga Australia.
Like many of us, Flo’s childhood bore challenges! From her teenage years into her 20’s, Flo had a close relationship with drugs and alcohol. At various points in her life she has suffered from depression, anxiety, weight issues and eating disorder, hormone imbalance, the effects from childhood trauma, and grief. Since her mid twenties, Flo has been on a quest for healing and transformation. Yoga has been a constant ally since then, and along with meditation, homeopathy and ayurveda, has been the means to achieving happy and functional relationships and life in general.
Flo began practising yoga in 1991, and began teaching in 1997. Born in the U.K, and a full-time resident there until the age of 23, she first started her yoga journey whilst travelling in India and Nepal in the early 90’s. During several long pilgrimages to India, Flo studied various different styles of yoga from different teachers. Since settling in Australia in 1992, Flo has deepened her commitment to yoga as a lifestyle. She studied Iyengar yoga in Melbourne with Glenn Ceresoli and in Sydney with the Sydney Yoga Centre in the early 90’s. In 1999 Flo completed the challenging Yoga Arts Nine-Month teacher training intensive in Byron Bay, taught by Louisa Sear. Since then she has continued to be an almost constant student, with Dena Weisman (nee Kingsberg) Matthew Sweeney, Clive Sheridan, the Satyananda Yoga Academy, the Mohans, Libbie Nelson, Donna Fahri, Judith Lasater and the Viniyoga Healing Foundation of India among others. She has attended retreats and workshops with the world’s best teachers, and continues to learn new skills to this day. In 2014, Flo completed a 3 year commitment and graduated as one of the first group of Australian yoga teachers, from the Yoga Therapy Australia Post Graduate Diploma of Yoga Therapy, taught by Dr. NC of the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar tradition from the Viniyoga Healing Foundation of India, Chennai. She is now a registered Yoga Therapist.
Due to persistent study, and the diverse knowledge of her teachers, Flo has an unusually wide range of expertise to draw on. Trained by masters of Iyengar, Astanga, Satyananda and Viniyoga traditions as well as knowledge of ayurvedic diet and lifestyle, Flo uses whatever tools best fit the student. Her abiding focus is on finding our natural ease within the postures, and on cultivating an ever deepening awareness of the relationship between the body, the breath, and our state of mind. She teaches ‘pranayama with movement’ through the medium of graceful, flowing sequences in synchrony with the breath.
Her style is both meditative and enlivening, balancing the active and the passive sides of our nature. As we focus within, developing the capacity to witness ourselves, the sessions themselves become a form of Yoga Therapy, which flows out into our lives beyond the classroom. Things that are buried deep within the tissues, within the cells, within the psyche, are gradually brought up into the light of consciousness, where we have the opportunity to review, and make choices based on wisdom, rather than unconscious, ‘knee-jerk’ reactions.
Flo’s own inherited spinal instability and unusual spinal curves, has led to a keen interest in finding optimum ways of working to produce strong and pain-free backs and hips. Flo was a highly regarded remedial, deep-tissue and trigger-point therapy massage therapist for fifteen years, and is also a qualified homeopath. She has also studied and uses ayurvedic principles. Her skills in massage therapy and her long relationship with healing and yoga have produced a special understanding of spinal misalignment, related postural limitations, and how to work in yoga to promote optimum results.
Flo has produced beneficial results working with students within a wide range of health and fitness, from quadriplegics to athletes, Chronic fatigue and M.S sufferers to eating disorder patients.