About Maja

Yoga found me

I was studying Film Production, dreaming of making documentaries, and quietly falling apart.

From the outside it looked fine. University, plans, a future mapped out. Inside I was anxious, exhausted, and so disconnected from myself that I am not sure I could have answered honestly if someone had asked how I was.

My sister's friend told me yoga might help me relax. That was the whole reason I went. I turned up at a gym class assuming it was a form of physical exercise, something to stretch out and tick off.

Then, somewhere in that hour, my breath changed. It went deep, without me forcing it. My mind stopped its circling. My heart became still.

Nothing about my life had changed when I walked out of that room. But something in me had cracked open, and I could not unknow it.

That is the whole beginning. No lightning bolt. One hour, one breath, and a small door opening.

I got on a plane to India

I graduated with a four-year degree and everyone assumed I would go into film. Instead I booked a flight to Rishikesh to train as a yoga teacher.

My parents thought I had lost my mind. Who spends four years on a degree and then goes off to study yoga? I understood why they said it. I could not give them a sensible answer, because I did not have one. All I had was a knowing in my chest that would not leave me alone.

I was terrified. Twenty-three, fresh out of university, no job, no plan beyond the training, going alone to a country I did not know. I did not tell many people how frightened I actually was.

I went anyway. My heart knew the way, even when I could not explain it to anyone, including myself.

I did my 200 hours at Rishikesh Yogpeeth. Some days I was homesick and completely out of my depth. Some days I was more alive than I had ever been. Usually the same day.

I came home changed. Not fixed, not enlightened. Changed. I knew what I was here to do, and I have not doubted it once since.

Ecuador

Two years later I went alone again, to Durga Tiger School in Ecuador, for a 300-hour training in shamanism and tantra.

If India gave me discipline, breath and structure, Ecuador took me somewhere far less tidy. Ceremony. Shadow. The parts of myself I had been politely stepping around for years.

That is where I learned that healing is not always beautiful. Sometimes it is messy and inconvenient and happens at three in the morning. And that the way out is almost always straight through.

Everything I offer you, I needed first

Since then I trained in the medicine of cacao with Keith's Cacao, and became a breathwork facilitator with Jon Paul Crimi.

I did not collect these to build a CV. I collected them because each one gave me back a piece of myself. More honest. More courageous. More able to stay with what is real instead of managing it.

I have been through every practice I offer you. On the days it worked and the days it took me apart. Nothing I guide is theory. I am not standing above you pointing at a path. I am walking slightly ahead on the same one, turning around to say: this way. I have got you.

The ocean found me

I did not expect the ocean.

The first time I swam with wild dolphins, something opened in my chest that I did not know had been closed. I was crying into my mask and laughing at the same time, completely undone by creatures who had no reason to come close and chose to anyway.

I have spent years since trying to describe it and failing.

What I can tell you is this. Whales, dolphins and the open water become guardians and guides if you let them. They want nothing from you. They do not need you to perform, or explain yourself, or be further along than you are. They meet you exactly as you arrive, and in that meeting you remember something about who you are and why you came.

Where my two worlds meet

A place to be exactly as you are

Since 2019, across 25 retreats in 8 countries, I have been holding spaces where people are seen, heard and loved exactly as they are. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is pushed. You open in your own time, usually with the help of the ocean and the beings in it, who do this work far better than I ever could.

People arrive carrying things they have not said out loud in years. Somewhere in the week, usually without meaning to, they put them down.

I do this because I remember being lost. I remember having no sense of purpose and no idea how to find one. These practices brought me home to myself. Now I share them so you can find your own way back.

Your turn

If something stirred in you while you were reading this, do not scroll past it. Pay attention and listen to the quiet voice within.

I know exactly what it is to have a knowing in your chest that you cannot justify to anyone, including yourself. The trip that makes no sense. The week you cannot quite afford. The voice saying go while every practical part of you lists the reasons not to.

Every year that passes is a year you did not go. The dolphins will be at Sataya, the whales will be in Tonga, the whale sharks will be at Mafia Island. The only question is whether you are in the water with them.

You do not need to be flexible, or spiritual, or further along than you are. You do not need to arrive fixed. Most people come alone, and nobody stays a stranger past the second day. Come exactly as you are. That is the entire invitation.

Places on each retreat are limited and they do go. If your heart is already leaning towards one, take a look at the dates while it is still saying yes.

And if you are close but unsure, talk to me. Book a free call and bring me your real questions, the practical ones and the ones you feel silly asking. No pressure, no pitch. Just the two of us working out whether this is your year.