About Bec Thompson

When you first decide on a yoga class, its natural to want to know a little bit about the person who will be teaching you.  So here is a brief introduction to me, Bec Thompson founder and principle teacher at Core Yoga and how I came to Yoga, very unusually in my teenage years.

Founder of Core Yoga, Bec Thompson

I first started practising when I was 16, unusually in those days it was my mother who encouraged me to go to the local adult education classes, to see if it would help as I was a little stressed over exams.

If I think about it now, I realise that this was really quite forward thinking of my Mum. These days we hear a lot about the benefit of yoga in various aspects of life, school, pregnancy, relationships, work-life balance, mental health and lots lots more.

But way back then, it was unheard of in schools. Certainly I was definitely the only under 40 in the class (or so it seemed to my 16 year old self).  Fortunately I loved that class; the teacher must have been very inspiring because I never needed coercing into yoga again. From starting to hear Indian (Sanskrit) words like prana and asana, and even an introduction to nasal cleansing. I really embraced every bit of yoga, even using my elder brother’s bedroom for practice whilst he was away at university.

Someone recently asked me about how I came to teach yoga and I found myself recalling a memory that had been lost to me for years. My PE teacher must have been fed up with me twittering on about yoga, so she asked me to take the class and teach yoga. Can you believe that happening today? How many forms would have to be filled in? What amazes me now looking back is that I really don’t remember having any nerves, just excited by the opportunity to share what I absolutely loved and what had helped me so much.

Indeed, this was the young woman who, up till that point, worried and fretted over exams, yet here I was standing up in front of my classmates to teach them yoga.  Maybe this subconscious memory later influenced my decision to train to become a yoga teacher. So big thanks to my first yoga teacher and the PE teacher who gave me the opportunity to teach yoga aged just 16.

Throughout my university years and early working life I have always sought out a yoga class, just as you are probably doing now. Some I have gelled with, others not so much. As with most newbies to yoga, I was drawn to the posture work. Classes that were predominantly meditation or chanting didn’t hold my interest back then, even though these days I do love both chanting and meditation now.  

Because I went through that experience myself, I can really sympathise when some of my students prefer just the physical side of yoga. I am fortunate that when this happens, my younger-self, kicks in and remembers what I felt like. Fortunately I always seem to find the words to put those students  at ease and surprisingly many of them give meditation a go.

My early experience of meditation helps me to sympathise with students who really just prefer the physical side of yoga, encourage them to give meditation a go, then ease and guide them through the ups and downs.

More often than not, they, like me, become the biggest advocates of the more spiritual practices of yoga