I started playing the viola when I was six. Growing up in a family of musicians, string instruments were part of my everyday life. Their sound, their presence, the ritual of practicing: all of it felt familiar. Beginning the viola didn’t feel like stepping into something unknown; it felt natural, almost obvious.

That early love carried me through conservatory auditions, long rehearsals, and the slow building of a dream: to be an orchestral musician who knew how to listen, to blend, and to leave the stage feeling like I’d given everything that was inside me. But somewhere between the excitement and the hours of repetitive motion, my body started to speak a language I didn’t understand: ache, then sharp pain, then limits.

The years in the conservatory were exhilarating and hard on my body. I pushed through marathon practice sessions, repertoire pile-ups, and the pressure to audition. Eventually, the pain moved from a nuisance to a roadblock. Tendonitis crept into both my arms and wrists. Sometimes it flared during rehearsals; sometimes in the middle of everyday tasks. I tried physiotherapy. It helped temporarily. The pain kept returning.

What I didn’t have then was the sense that healing could come from how I moved through my whole life: how I breathed under pressure, how I organized tension in my shoulders and neck, how small habitual patterns in posture and practice added up day after day. I felt like I was treating symptoms without seeing the system.

The turning point came slowly, and it didn’t look like a miracle. It looked like a class where my breath was the first instruction: « Find your exhale and your anchor. » It looked like learning to track subtle sensations rather than bulldozing through them. It was an inside-out approach. Instead of only treating the inflamed tendon, I learned to become an active participant in my recovery.

That inside-out work changed everything. I learned to notice which muscles held the bow too tight, how my jaw and tongue locked when I was nervous, and how a brief breath could soften an entire chain of tension. Small daily practices, mindful breath, short movement breaks between rehearsals added up. Slowly, the episodes of tendonitis diminished. I could practice longer without pain. I felt steadier during auditions. Most importantly, I felt empowered; I had agency in my recovery.

Yoga didn’t turn me into a perfect, pain-free player overnight. But it taught me a different relationship to my instrument and my body. Where I had once seen my body as a fragile container to be pushed and patched, I started to see it as an intelligent system that responds to care, attention, and intelligent movement. That shift allowed me to keep pursuing my orchestral dreams with less fear and more resilience.

As my practice deepened, two things became clear: first, that general, one-size-fits-all approaches didn’t meet the specific needs of musicians; and second, that I wanted to take what I’d learned and offer it to other players. I became a certified yoga teacher because I wanted to translate those inside-out strategies into practices that actually fit rehearsal schedules, performance calendars, and the particular shapes musicians’ bodies make while playing.

What would it look like if the yoga offered to musicians understood their language, their schedule, and their anatomy? My training gave me the tools; my experience as a musician gave me the credibility to speak their language. I built short, practical sequences for pre-performance calm and classes that addressed the way an orchestral rehearsal demands endurance in very specific places: shoulders, back, arms.

What I teach is less about elaborate poses and more about usable, repeatable habits. Musicians don’t need to become expert yogis; they need to learn how to partner with their bodies. They need breath tools that calm the nervous system before an audition, not a lecture about alignment. They need practices that fit between rehearsals, not on top of an already full schedule.

I never want to give the impression that yoga is a cure-all. Pain and injury are complex, and sometimes you need physiotherapy, medical guidance, or rest. What I offer complements those supports. My work is about skill-building: giving you tools to be active in your recovery and habits that sustain you across a career that can be physically demanding.

A final note for anyone still in the middle of it: feeling pain doesn’t mean your dream is over. It means you’re human and that there are tools and practices that can help you keep playing. Yoga helped me stay in the music longer and with more joy. That’s why I teach: to help other musicians find the same steadiness, inside and out.