Flow into Motion
I met Sarah Abela on a beautifully sunny day for a coffee at a quaint little spot in Valletta. The setting and the company idyllic, we could have talked for many more hours…this is just a lovely conversation with a lovely soul sharing her spirit through yoga…enjoy
Photographs throughout are Sarah’s
How easy is it nowadays to start off on your own path?
I think nowadays it’s not about the traditional career path, everyone is trying to make it on their own somehow and yet we’re all connected. I feel a shift from the time when they used to ask us “what do you want to be when you grow up?”... we can do so many things now. In my time I used to feel this pressure on us as kids, to know what we want to be, but I’m not sure how it is now. What do you think?
I think it depends, perhaps in primary and secondary it’s still the same - at least it was for me, but I do understand what you mean. This notion must trickle down to the younger ones. I think it’s easier to transmit this and feel it in 6th form or University - although even most of my friends took traditional paths, which are great and needed too, after all.
But I know what you mean, the possibilities are there, if you want to make it you can!
Yes, it’s more open. We’re more open to doing new things. I never thought I would be doing this, perhaps if you talked to me a few years ago this would have been quite scary but now I think of it as ‘if not now, then when?!’. I never took the traditional path to University and school so maybe this has always been somewhere inside. I went to University after 8 years of working full time.
And what did you do in-between?
I started to work at the Casino, as a croupier, and did that for over 5 years. I also spent some time abroad dealing poker, that was a really nice experience in itself. And when I came back to Malta, you know, I asked myself if I wanted to keep on working night shifts. I felt I needed a change. So I spent some time working at a call centre, which was a nice change - to wake up when the sun rises and sleep when it sets, to really get into a new routine. I only realised later how unhealthy it was to do night shifts for so many years.
It was around a year into working in customer service that I decided to go back to University. I kept the job on a part time basis and took the courses up full time. You know, I really loved being a student again.
And what did you study?
Psychology.
Oh fantastic! That is fun.
Mmm...although I wanted to do psychology, the experience of being at University gave me so much more. I thought I wasn’t disciplined enough, going in and knowing I had to study, research, do assignments, but I realised that when you want something you’ll find a way. No matter what happens, you’ll do it - and I did!
And now you get to mix psychology with yoga?!
I would love to eventually. Not just yet, because I feel I’m still developing my practice, my business and my classes. The psychosocial aspect ties in so much, yoga and psychology go hand in hand, they really do. There’s also the scientific side to yoga, and it goes with the scientific branch of yoga - everything makes sense together.
Right now it’s a mix between the business side - you know posting and marketing - and the reason you get on the mat. I’ve been practicing yoga for 6/7 years now, but it was still weird to post pictures of myself in a pose in the beginning.
I think after the first few, it becomes easier...more comfortable.
Yes. I’m more comfortable with it, but I also try not to let it affect me - I post because I feel like posting, not because I feel I have to.
It’s a more natural feeling, I think it’s more authentic than posting for the sake of posting.
Yeah. Now there is a sort of inward battle, between my practice as a qualified yoga teacher and needing to look a certain way. Instagram is bombarded by fancy yoga poses and model-esque images of how yoga looks, and it even affects me. You end up comparing yourself to them. Now I spend some days on social media, even for inspiration, but I also spend days off it.
I think that balance is really important. Sometimes I end up sort of comparing myself to people in different fields, and you can’t compare yourself to anyone!
Yes, yes. As someone who already questions themselves I feel myself do that too, so I need that time away to look at things objectively.
I find that merging what you already know, and what you can or want to give is also a balancing act. For example, you say that you want to incorporate psychology into your practice, and then there’s always this question of “when is the right time” to do that?
Ah yes, you will constantly say that but you know, it’s never the right time. But then there will be shifts in life, or triggers rather, that will automatically lead you to that place.
In my case, when I finished my studies I quit my part time job and I took up a full time role related to occupational psychology with a great company here. But I couldn’t find it within me to stick to an office job. I started to feel I needed a break, and that this wasn’t what I wanted...anyways I only spent just over 6 months there. Yoga has been on my mind for quite a while, so this was the time to try it out seriously.
The whole path led you there.
Yeah.
How do you find yoga in Malta? Internationally it’s huge but what’s the community like here?
Well it’s now that I’m getting into the community of people who teach yoga. So I started building connections because I started yoga personally 6 years ago. When the classes where I was attending stopped, I carried on by following online videos and I made sure to go once a year to these yoga and surf retreats - you wake up and do yoga, then surf, then yoga again...I loved that!
Once I started the teacher training I started to develop more contacts. I did the 200 hour part time here and the programme really exceeded my expectations. I had initially wanted to immerse myself for a month somewhere like Bali, but then because of the situation I had to change my plans and found the training here. At least I also got to teach before I ended the programme, and that really helped with my confidence in the teacher training programme.
I’m really into getting posture and alignment spot-on. Though it’s something I’m also working on because you can’t be so fixated on those aspects - although they’re important, they’re not everything, they’re not why most people come for a yoga session. Each individual has a different purpose, whether to relax or to lose weight, everyone has a different goal. So now I’m working on simply guiding them in my sessions, I talk and they can listen if they want!
But posture and getting them to align properly might also be important to getting them to the point they want to be, as well as taking it seriously. So it is important…
Yes, true. I’m just looking for that balance between going into the technicalities - what the muscles are doing, healthy flexibility, unhealthy flexibility, engaging and not engaging - and allowing them to relax.
Is there a certain yoga you tend to shift towards?
I didn’t realise what kind of yoga I was doing until my teacher training. I was doing vinyasa for most of my practice, and I used to like yin yoga, because I’m not naturally flexible. So with yin yoga you hold the pose for 2-5 minutes, and through the training programme and research I realised that it targets tendons, rather than muscle lengthening. Since I want to work on my flexibility there’s no reason to focus on tendons, because I cannot manipulate them as much as the muscles. Now I prefer to engage the muscle, but I still do yin as it relaxes me. I’ve found that the beginner classes I teach require more strength than flexibility too, especially if they’ve never done yoga or any other form of exercise before, so I think that’s more important.
Do you work with groups or individuals? Each person must have more or less different needs, after all.
I work with both, there are different dynamics at play in both so it’s nice to have a mixture. In a class you need to focus on the energy you are giving more than just correcting posture and the like, and in a private session you have the opportunity to get into alignment detail and target the session to the person's needs more.
How do you deal with different needs or goals?
I usually separate classes but now I’m doing just an all-rounded beginner vinyasa class, and it’s a combination of relaxation, strength-building and flexibility. I tend to combine flexibility with muscular engagement and it’s also important to offer variations for those who practice yoga and those who are joining as beginners. I emphasize the importance of getting to know your own body with all my students and that takes time and patience, along with acceptance - acceptance of where you are at that moment. That in itself becomes a mental shift.
I think that’s something yoga can make you more aware of too. Perhaps most of us are out of touch with what our bodies are signalling towards.
We are very out of touch, and the older we get the more out of touch we get. Yoga really helps to bring back that mind-body awareness, opening them up to their intuition again! Even if you don’t manage a pose or manage to hold a pose, it’s okay, what’s important is how it feels, you’ll note that at times the same pose will feel different each time you practice it, until eventually you find neutrality
Do you work with kids?
I wasn’t working with kids till recently. Nowadays along with yoga I do aerial slings, and now I started teaching aerial hoops too! Perhaps I will keep 1 class a week for yoga and focus on aerial sessions now and there are kids classes for those.
These sessions were doors, opportunities which opened up from yoga so I’m really grateful to be able to practice and teach them.
How exciting! Tell us a bit more about the aerial sessions, do you use similar poses to yoga?
It’s completely different. You know I didn’t even know the difference before I started to practice myself - there is aerial yoga, aerial slings and aerial hoops. So with aerial yoga you use a sort of hammock and do yoga poses, such as pigeon and lotus. You have a lot of upside down poses and so your focus is on the extension of the spine. Aerial slings, on the other hand, really aim to build upper body strength, which yoga might be limited in providing, especially targeting the back muscles.
So then when you’re doing yoga poses which require upper body strength, it’s there...
Mmm it helps it a lot, especially with pull-up strength which yoga doesn’t really cater for. You don’t really get that pull-up strength with a mat-based practice. I got my upper body strength from aerial slings, I never went to a gym and I don’t plan to. The gym might be a faster process but I enjoy the slings.
I started aerial sling practice during my teacher training course and I fell in love with it, truly. It’s so different to having reps to finish, or finishing a fitness class which though I’m happy to complete, kills me in the process! The slings don’t give me that feeling of 'ok how many more reps to go' , I simply enjoy it and look forward to a class. So I attended classes for 3 months, then I completed the training for the slings too.
What’s the difference between the slings and aerial yoga in a hammock?
With aerial slings the drapes are not separate, they’re stuck at one point which swivels. So you’d be doing, well not yoga inspired poses, they’re actually poses from the circus arts. It’s quite fun, you have spinning, turning, rolling up and rolling down poses...at the beginning I couldn’t pull myself up but now that I’ve gotten used to them I’m feeling the same thing about the hoops. It’s all a matter of practice.
But it’s really fun and it takes me back to that creative space because they involve a lot of flow, movement and dance in many ways. Sometimes it’s even fun to simply hang and stay there, and you’re still getting a workout out of it!
I still do yoga everyday personally, but for now it’s taken a back seat till I do these classes. You know, shavasana in a hammock is something else - it’s such a beautiful feeling! It feels like you’ve created your own cocoon.
And these sessions would be for beginners only?
Yes the aim is to build upper body strength for beginners. There are of course poses which are difficult and you’d only go into those once they’ve gotten to a certain stage but yes the sessions are aimed towards gaining that strength.
So aerial sling and hoop classes are in Sliema at ‘Island Yoga’ where you did your teacher training; where do you organize your yoga classes?
I hold yoga classes in the south, I live there so it’s very convenient too. There aren’t many either, which is good for me. I focus on beginners but I really want to be able to transition with them and help them move on to a more challenging practice.
I don’t want to be that kind of teacher who promotes yoga as everything, as the answer to everything in your life; because we all have our own issues and our own path towards growth. I know that yoga and meditation helps, but it’s not everything. Some teachers really focus on psychological issues but I don’t like to do that. I’m very careful of what I say, what words I use and how I say things. Of course I saw this from going to classes myself, so I’m very aware of how easy it is to go down that path.
I see what you mean.
Breathing, neural pathways and relaxation all make sense, but there’s a balance that needs to be struck I think. The teacher needs to be aware of their influence on the student too.
And sometimes it’s hard to relate because we’re all at different stages of our path, of our growth; so something I might say might not resonate at this moment in time for example, said at a different time it would. Timing is quite tricky, perhaps it’s best to stay a step back to make sure what is said is relevant to all or just be wary of how you say things…
Yes, because we’re speaking at an emotional level. It happens with friends of mine sometimes when they find they can’t relate or have no idea what I’m on about, which is strange considering I'm still very into the Western psychology. I don’t want to alienate people, I see yoga as complementary medicine, everything needs to be done in the right way, in a moderate way. After all, the energy we provide in the class transfers throughout the class and throughout our lives.
Energy as in quality…
Yes quality, words, trust - which is already hard to build - so when we take it to the emotional level we have to be very careful and pace ourselves. This is a journey of course and there are mental shifts which occur; I went from starting yoga because I wanted to exercise to be healthy and was really sceptical of the meditation and relaxation aspects, to being totally hooked to these aspects. I also got into the scientific realities of these aspects and I grew to love my body too. I used to have a difficult relationship with my image, so this was quite a transformation - it was such a shift.
It’s a mind shift. Do you want to explore that a bit more? You were talking about how we are more Western-ly inclined, how has your perspective changed towards incorporating Eastern philosophy and even with your psychology training?
In psychology we didn’t have Eastern, I mean we barely scratched the surface of what there is in psychology, let alone. I was already doing yoga whilst studying psychology, so I got to link a lot. For example Jacobson talks about breathwork, and there’s a lot of focus placed upon breathwork in yoga, it’s very similar. What was occurring in the West had already occurred in the East, it’s true, but we see this even in literature. Everything ties together in the end.
You know, yoga started as something only the elite could practice, and the yoga we know in the West is only physical yoga, but yoga is all about becoming One. Yoga has continually shifted in time, and what we experience here is another shift in time for me. The shape and form make sense to now, it will always evolve.
I would have loved to do the teacher training in Asia but I feel if I had done so it would have changed me completely. I say this, but I know that tomorrow I could say something different.
And that’s really beautiful.
It’s your own journey, and it’s okay if your opinion changes.
Personally Eastern philosophy opened my mind in a completely different way to Western. I feel I found Eastern thought a bit late, but it of course came at just the right time - when I needed it and when I was open to it. It was definitely an ‘Aha! Moment’ and I was lucky I could combine my thoughts with my studies.
Eastern thought is more collective and community oriented I think, and that's why it's gained such a momentum in the west at the moment, as we have become very individualistic.
Aha. I see that happening in the sense that all is One, we are all connected.
Here I think that that talk becomes hypocritical because we want collaboration but it’s actually competition - the capitalist structure, after all. I think we lost touch of/with this Oneness, and I feel as though I've fallen into that trap because we live in this society.
Yes, but I think if you see and feel the difference it’s also something…
And you try not to perpetuate and advertise it all, in a way. Yes, it’s about balance because we all still need to earn a living at the same time.
I think it’s about doing the best you can, and knowing the difference between good and bad. That’s what I aim for, that’s how I live and I know you can change the world in subtle ways but I’m not thinking of going out to change the world. I want to do that through conversation, reading...if you look at the science of meditation and the shift in thought - it’s extremely interesting to see how things have changed! These are the important things to me.
What is yoga to you?
Yoga for me is the nourishment for the Self, specifically my-Self. Whether you nourish yourself with food and sleep I call that yoga. The difference lies in acknowledging the ‘why’ you have arrived on the mat, why you decided to have a rest...simply ask yourself why you do what you do. That in itself brings your focus on self-awareness and reflection. It doesn’t matter what your answer is, what the ‘whys’ are; what matters is that by simply asking and reflecting you are getting to know yourself better and better - basically becoming one with yourself.
The physical practice itself can take many different forms for me; sometimes I practice because I want to achieve a particular goal, sometimes because I want to unwind and relax, sometimes there’s no particular reason. Or aim. As I proceed during the physical practice I tend to note that most often my ‘whys’ change, and a different insight unknown to me crops up.
Yoga got me addicted to myself, got me to appreciate and acknowledge that my body and mind are one, and it’s a powerful vehicle that we have till the day we die. So play around with it, try to understand it, try to master it as it’s changing to adapt to your choices, surroundings and presence. Your relationship to yourself translates to your relationship with others.
The biggest lesson I am still learning is to be kind to myself, to allow mistakes and to allow forgiveness...Not allowing these for myself and being too harsh most often translates to my relationships and automatic judgements - in reality we are all here navigating a complex changing world that changes us along the way.
Get in touch with Sarah for your yoga classes - groups and 1-1 sessions
This conversation really got me thinking about how we are many ways very much the same people yet how we are also constantly changing at the same time! We are made up of contradictions, we are a living contradiction perhaps - in the best sense…and in many ways I think that’s kind of liberating. What really struck me is Sarah’s description of yoga, I think this will really stay with me - how yoga allows us to take a deeper dive with-in and that thanks to this we can be transformed with-out too! Fabulous…let us come to know ourselves more, let us be kind, gentle and disciplined.
Thank you Sarah
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Yoga, Aerial Hoops, Aerial Slings