About Me

Hello friends,
I’m Grace, and a big warm welcome to DubYin Yoga!
I am a yin yoga teacher teacher trainer, yoga teacher and secondary-school educator based in Dublin, and more recently online. Passionate about empowering the students and teachers with whom I work, my main work within the yoga sphere currently is in educating and mentoring yoga teachers, and bringing critical thinking and personal growth into this journey of transformation. My ultimate goal is to one day be no longer necessary to my students’ growth - I want to create empowered teachers and self-reflective practitioners who fully embody the position they hold with grace and wisdom and gentle strength.
My school teaching experience over the last decade included primary school music classrooms and French university lecture theatres, but I spent the bulk of that time in Mount Anville Secondary School where I taught French, Music and Philosophy. With such a pedagogical background, I suppose my journey into the world of yoga teacher education was a natural and fitting evolution. For five years I worked in both the formal education world and the yoga education world exploring how I might endeavour to close the gap between them. I bring the results of that enquiry into work now and it is where my ongoing research lies.

Me?

Believe it or not, this was tricky! ;-) My students came up with the following:

“Real, honest, clear, passionate, and unfiltered”.

“Grace is beautifully authentic. I trusted her immediately.”

“Curious and inquisitive”.

“Warm and relatable”.

“Critical thinker and questioner”.

“Razor sharp clarity, profound kindness and great humour. A passionate educator with an artistic sensibility”

'“A strength of presence that holds an incredibly powerful space for others’ healing journey” -

I think they did a pretty good job there actually!

I’m direct. I get right to the point and like to pierce through the nonsense to get to the truth at the core of the matter. I take people on a journey if they are willing to come along with me. And I see yin yoga as a practice that goes so much more beyond the scope of yoga: It is ultimately a practice that holds the key to a fuller embodiment in this life.

My teachers & main influences

Fundamentally functional in my approach, I have learned much from my teacher Mysan Sidbo, my primary yin teacher since 2015. Herself an assistant to Paul Grilley, the approach she has passed on to me honours the individuality of each student’s experience. Grounded in a thorough understanding of skeletal variation and functional anatomy, this is where the yin yoga practice begins for me. I have completed 400 hours of training with Mysan in Bali over three separate periods (2015, 2017, and 2019) and was honoured to assist her with Levels 1 & 2 in 2019. I am looking forward to continuing my study with her in 2021 with another 400hour Functional Hatha training.

In 2015 also I discovered the teaching of Sarah Powers with whom I trained in Australia in 2015. I particularly resonated with her interest in Transpersonal Psychology and how she interweaves this into the yin practice. It was through Sarah that I first became interested in Vipassana meditation which has had a considerable impact on my yin teaching practice and teaching philosophy. Holding the space as a teacher without relying on your words to fill the empty and sometimes uncomfortable spaces is an ongoing practice, and one which contributes greatly to teacher self-development.

I trained with Bernie Clark and Diana Batts in Canada in 2018. It was on this training that I discovered sandbags and they have been incorporated into my teaching - as and when useful - since. I have also done a Mindfulness module with Josh Summers in 2016, Myofascial Release training with Rachel Land (Yoga Medicine) in 2019, Yin Meridian Theory with Norman Blair and Kate Henley in 2020.

My ongoing research and supplementary education

Meridian theory and acupressure with Angela Chambers

Yoga for Trauma with Embodied Philosophy

Internal Family Systems with Jennifer O’Sullivan

Jungian Studies with Jasbinder Garnermann, director of the CG Jung Institute in Ireland.

I-Rest Yoga Nidra Meditation Training

300hour Yoga Psychology Training with Ashley Turner (Yoga Psyche Soul)

My formal education background

Masters Degree in French and Music, Trinity College Dublin, 2006

Master Degree in Irish History and Politics, Sorbonne University Paris, 2008

Higher Diploma in Education, Trinity College Dublin, 2009

My yoga education background:

Bikram Yoga Training, Los Angeles, 2013

Yin/Yin Yang/Yoga Therapy with Mysan Sidbo, Bali, 2015/2017/2019

Insight Yoga with Sarah Powers, Australia, 2015

Mindfulness with Josh Summers, Ireland, 2016

Yin with Bernie Clark and Diana Batts, Canada, 2018

Vinyasa & Restorative with The Elbowroom, Ireland, 2019

Yin & Meridians with Norman Blair & Kate Henley, 2020

Myofascial Release & MyoYin with Nicky Hadjithoma, January 2021

Random info about me

I struggle so much with writing bios! Incredibly difficult to encapsulate not only what is useful to you as one of my students. I tend to procrastinate and then outsource… hence why I had to reach out to my students to get their help! Recovering intellectual and over-thinker - yoga really brought me into my body for which I will forever be eternally grateful.

I am ridiculously analytical. But it makes me an excellent teacher, and it allows me to organise what I am teaching, and then consider the how, the why and the how.

I love poetry and find great solace in the words of David Whyte in particular of late. If you join me for yin you will likely hear some of them sooner or later.

I don’t think there’s anywhere else I feel more at home than at the piano - where words fail, music speaks!

I am mad into anything related to personality types, personal development, astrology, Tarot, so for anyone who cares, here you go:

INFJ - Everything I communicate has to be 100% true at the time of print… this website will constantly evolve as I do :-)

Enneagram 8 (Intimate subtype: interestingly, most commonly misidentifies as a 4 - I was initially DEVO not to be as unique as I thought I was ;-), but if I’m not challenged I feel stunted, and if I’m not challenging my students I feel like I’m not teaching… more on this in the training section. All. the. probing. questions. all. the. time.

1/3 Generator in Human Design (Investigator - Martyr - all those who speak without having done the research, completed the qualifications, and experienced it for yourselves in your own bodies, beware! I spot you a mile away, and you know it! ;-)

Gemini Sun, Pisces Moon, Capricorn Ascendent - Holy Moly!

Train with Me

***My teaching***
I believe firmly that it is professionally trained teachers who are best equipped to train yoga teachers, and I bring my robust experience and extensive pedagogical expertise into the yoga education world. My teaching is clear, direct, raw, unfiltered. I hold the space, and I keep it uncluttered so that your experience as a student is always at the core, and not my words. I see my role as facilitator of a beautiful process or journey - I set up the conditions and then the teaching comes through me. In the same way, I teach yin students to set up the right conditions for the practice to work through them. We are the containers for the practice to unfold within us, and for us. And the awareness that accompanies this process is truly exponential.
Kindness and compassion for ourselves are always centre-stage, but so too are accountability and discernment. I believe that great teaching will encourage critical thinking as much as it will encourage stillness in the mind and a deeper awareness. My classes, workshops, and teacher trainings are likely to be challenging and transformative; I will ask you to bring your full self into the experience and into the process. I believe that yin yoga teacher training will truly transform the way that you teach, and therefore at times the teaching will trigger. That’s how you know you’re learning. I don’t think it’s possible to be an effective teacher and please everyone all the time. I consider continual learning one of the cornerstones of my teaching and practice; one can only hold space as a teacher when in humble acceptance of how little we can truly 'know' for sure.