Olive Walton
Yoga Teacher & Movement Coach
Having a curious nature has guided Olive down her unexpected journey and led her into the position she finds herself in today, a movement practitioner and yoga teacher based in Brighton. She shares her thoughts on her community and surrounding environment. Authenticity, honesty and playfulness are all important components within her captivating practice.
COULD YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?
I’ve been practicing yoga for the last seven years and teaching in Brighton for the last three years. I was very much self-taught then went on to do some formal training in February to March of 2018.
I’ve always been super involved in movement or exercise, if that’s what you want to call it. From a young age I liked horse riding, netball, swimming, athletics, gymnastics… I’ve always loved moving. For me, it felt a very natural progression into this field of yoga and doing what I do today. It felt very organic, I never knew what I was going to do as a kid, let alone have imagined myself being here now. I went to Uni to study psychology, although I didn’t really feel like I had a super, big passion. I was hoping to go into clinical psych and looking into mental health, but that turned out to be very hard to get into.
SO BECOMING A YOGA TEACHER WASN’T YOUR INITIAL PLAN?
No not at all. After I completed my degree, I began to find it very challenging to find work. Everyone wanted experience, which I obviously didn’t have. The only place I found work vaguely related to what I wanted to do was in a care home for adults with severe physical and mental disabilities. I planned to be there for a year to gain some experience, then to reapply for these jobs.
Then, literally two or three months into this job, I went away to India for a month to do my yoga teacher training. When I got back I quit within a month and went into teaching yoga full time, I think I realised how much it just wasn’t for me. I kept telling myself that I would be fine and that it would just be another nine months, but it just wasn’t worth it. I got no joy from being in such a draining environment, not from the people that I looked after but from the staff. It felt like a very toxic group I guess, which I was comparing to all of the insight and growth that yoga had offered me. I simply wanted to share that with people and allow them to experience the empowerment for themselves.
HOW WAS IT THAT YOU CAME TO FIND YOGA?
I was pretty active from a young age and from about 8 – 12 I did gymnastics, that’s where I found out I was naturally flexible and have hyper mobility in my elbows and knees. These things obviously helped quite a lot when it came to doing yoga asana and movement. When it came to my A levels, I was fed up of just sitting at a desk and studying all day. The school sports were starting to slow down so I just found myself getting more drawn towards yoga. I initially found it on Instagram, I came across three women that were doing this practice and it was fairly new to them as well. I felt like I could relate to them, as they were from my home town in Dubai. They were sharing their poses and practices online and I was so absorbed because, whilst they looked flexible, they also looked strong.
I got really curious, wondering if I could do what they were doing. I began screenshotting the photos online and piecing together these movements; I just wanted to see if I could replicate what they were doing. Of course, at the start, I looked at the pictures and videos I was taking of myself because I had no idea what I looked like. It was a way of seeing what I needed to work on and move, or acknowledging when I wasn’t ready for certain poses yet. Over time, I built up this backlog of photos into a personal movement library. I eventually started creating sequences and putting everything together myself.
Although I was self-taught, I was missing huge components of yoga. I had no idea how interlinked and interwoven the breath was, nor did I really know how sequences would start or why we ended class in Savasana – lying down for five to ten minutes after. I didn’t really understand Sanskrit or other philosophies involved in the practice, like why it was done or where it came from. I remember really struggling in my first class, I found it really difficult to hold poses because I’d never really paused in them for so long.
I think it was while I was writing my dissertation, I was bored and began googling things like ‘yoga teacher training’. It took a while of breaking things down and figuring out the school that I wanted to go to, but this one in India matched all the criteria I was looking for. I decided to book it for the following year – it became my 21st birthday present from my parents. So I went there because I felt my practice just wasn’t complete, like I knew something was missing. I wanted to learn more about the practice and have some proper, formal education. I had no idea of how much that trip would mean to me. I went with no real intention of being a teacher afterwards, it was sort of a selfish decision to go and understand more about this passion of mine.
Something I found really interesting to come out of the teacher training was that it was the first time I ever travelled to a place by myself, where no one knew who I was or anything about my history. It became very easy for me to step into the person I had always wanted to be, which certainly wasn’t the case while I was at university. I think, in a lot of ways, I felt quite held back at uni and as though parts of me were hidden away in the shadows. I’m not sure whether that was a repercussion of the people I was surrounded by, or perhaps I just didn’t feel comfortable in expressing myself, but when I went to India it felt like there was nothing holding me back.
I slowly began delving into the world of expressing myself completely and without fear. I can recognise now that I am a very different person to who I was back then, over the last three years I have changed in a lot of good ways. It was a huge catalyst for growth.
CAN YOU TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT THE MOVEMENTS THAT YOU TAKE PART IN?
In my first year of teaching I was only really into yoga, but I guess my teaching style was always quite explorative. I would try to be creative and explore different kinds of movement, often drawing from stuff that I saw on Instagram. More recently I would say that I’m more of a movement practitioner, since I do a bunch of mobility myself – my favourite way of referring to it at the moment is the ‘Anti-Desk Stretch Club’.
Bouldering has also been in my life for four or five years now, which I love. For me, it is a form of moving meditation. I find it quite hard sometimes when it comes to yoga to completely switch off because it is my job. Whenever I’m practicing a sequence, I’m always thinking about whether I could incorporate something or trying to remember it for a future class. Whereas with bouldering, the wall is all you can think about. If you’re not concentrating then you’re screwed, and the consequences can be pretty high.
I also practice a lot of handstand work and acro yoga, along with parkour which is really fun. More recently I been consistently training strength and conditioning. I decided to seek proper coaching which has been insane; I’m coached by a lovely lady called Chloe who has been programming me to build up my power and explosivity. We’ve been doing some Olympic lifting at the moment which is super fun, alongside other lifts which you could consider to be more like powerlifting - bench press, squats, deadlifts.
There is a weird juxtaposition between powerlifting and yoga. I think yoga can be seen as a very feminine things, which is so far removed from what it was. It was originally created for young, 14 year old Indian boys, but it has been taken so far away from that in the West. Then most people associate weightlifting with testosterone and men, or sweaty boys in the gym. I think these barriers are starting to break down a bit though, which is great.
With both yoga and parkour, they’re both quite independent movements that you tend to do by yourself. Even if you attend a yoga class, it’s not like a team sport. But the communities perhaps hold different values, such as competitiveness. I have found it comes across less in parkour, which is nice. People only really push themselves if they feel ready to, which isn’t always the case in yoga. There is a lot of ego involved in yoga, I was really ego-driven in my practice for about five years before I began to break it down. I think it took some serious learning to change that because the consequences aren’t as high in yoga as they are in something like parkour. If you don’t listen to yourself and push when you’re not ready you might tweak something, but it’s not likely to be as dire as breaking your ankle or something more serious. The consequences of a bigger ego are more risky in parkour than yoga.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON DIVERSITY OR INCLUSIVITY IN YOGA?
Yoga on the surface could definitely do with more diversity, for sure. It feels like there are waves of movement. There is a wonderful woman on Instagram called Susanna Barkataki doing a lot of important work to show what it means to respect the culture and practice of yoga, and not to appropriate it. She is really good at explaining how to include more diversity and where we can have more language that is appropriate to all genders. The practice shouldn’t feel exclusive, it should be there for everyone. Including those who aren’t able-bodied as well, there are things like chair yoga which is brilliant and still an accessible form of movement. Yoga shouldn’t just be about movement either – breath is also a crucial element. It could be about how you treat yourself or a form of discipline, or interact with others. There are eight limbs of yoga anyone can look into, it’s not always just about the physical practice.
A lot of the people you see in the media are female, which there is nothing inherently wrong with because a lot of women do practice. But I think the whole stereotype issue falls on the idea of ‘soft’ movement, it is often associated with a feminine movement. In reality, I really don’t think it has to be soft at all. It is a very physical practice, I suppose the bit that is considered feminine is the introspection that you get from listening to your mind and recognising emotion. In that respect, with the physicality and introspection, it is a very balanced practice. I find that very hard to convey in an Instagram post!
I can understand why people could look at it and think ‘Well, why would I want to? It’s just stretching’. But with that mindset, you would struggle to gain much from it. I’ve had my guy friends come to my class and they’ll tell me after that they found it really challenging. They’re always shocked, but it is a very physical practice – it’s not easy.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE ONLINE WORLD OF YOGA?
Yeah, it’s been interesting. One thing I always say to my students is that it doesn’t matter what it looks like. I know that Instagram gives us a heavy idea of what a pose should look like, but it’s really all about researching and understanding your own body. That is really the best thing you can do. The moment you start to remove the judgement or expectation of what you think the pose and the practice should look like is the moment that you begin to invite in more acceptance and understanding of yourself. An ethos of mine is to help people move more and just find enjoyment in it. I think exercise and movement has always been branded as a form of self-punishment. I just want people to find the joy in moving their bodies and simply exploring. I’ve always been fairly active on Instagram because it was such a tool for me coming into yoga. I have been sharing a lot of new content online recently, particularly on my YouTube channel.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR WOMEN OR PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN GETTING INTO MOVEMENT OF SOME KIND?
I think the biggest piece of advice I can give is to be curious. If you do find yourself being drawn towards a certain movements, do a bit of reading and research into it. I’m talking about outside of Instagram, because we all know it is very heavily curated.
When it comes to just moving and training outside in parks, it does get easier. I still understand how intimidating it can be, but a bit of advice I would give is to maybe find some outdoor classes or train with a friend so you feel less shy or insecure, the confidence will come. The more exposure you have to being outside and to moving, the less of a crap you’ll give. You just suddenly become more comfortable and confident in moving and doing your own thing, so people’s judgement becomes nothing to worry about. Whatever movement it is that you’re looking to try, go find a bunch of friends and do it – all power to you.
WHAT DIRECTION DO YOU SEE YOURSELF GOING IN?
I can see myself heading into an all-round coach that you can come to for a variety of things like stretching, mobility, more movement but perhaps also strength and conditioning. I’d like to be there for women who want to experience the kind of empowerment that I have felt from movement, because that is what has brought me to where I am today and I hold a lot of value in it. My confidence and strength has grown in so many ways, so I’d like to be able to be able to give that back to other women.
OLIVE IS A YOGA TEACHER AND MOVEMENT PRACTITIONER FROM BRIGHTON, YOU CAN FIND HER ONLINE HERE.
THE FULL ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE TO READ IN OUTSIDERS: HER STORIES. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BUYING YOUR OWN COPY, OR FOR MORE INFORMATION FEEL FREE TO GET IN TOUCH.