sarah leyla puello

Movement has always been part of my story – my parents were amateur athletes; together we spent evenings and weekends sailing in the Caribbean Sea, cycling and roller-blading in the park. After a short stint of ballet in my childhood, I found my stride in tennis, volleyball and squash, which I played competitively while at school and University. 

I still remember my first yoga class in 2008, in a little church hall in Oxford (UK): ‘Yoga is good for stretching’, they’d said, and great for dealing with the stresses of my doctoral-student life, I soon discovered. The fact is, it would turn out to be so much more. 

After my DPhil (that’s what they call PhDs in Oxford), I practiced yoga to support my sports-injured body and my chronically-tired mind back to health. Yoga helped me to shine a light on my anxious thoughts and on my unhealthy relationship with food and body image. In yoga, I found the space to observe these behaviours, feel the emotions attached to them and, over time, watch them take the backseat. I feel freer and lighter because I practice yoga. I am more patient, spiritual, compassionate and loving. Was I all of those things before yoga? Yes – the practice helped me see that. I decided to become a yoga teacher to share my passion for movement practice, for health and for authentic connection to self and others.   
 
 

I am also storyteller at heart, and so I feel my teaching practice as a calling to turn the body into the pen and paper of our personal stories. I believe that by giving the body freedom to express itself in a space that is vibrant, curious and yet thoughtful and considered, we can all begin to piece together our own paths to self-discovery, self-healing and deeper connection to others, to nature and to something beyond ourselves – to spirit. 

I feel yoga as a path of service in which I am called to share the safe and creative exploration of a physical practice, leaving space for the unravelling of something deeper, more meaningful and individual in us all.

trainings & education

200HR Vinyasa Yoga
200HR Forrest Yoga
50HR Hot Power Yoga
50HR Katonah Yoga
85HR Pregnancy Yoga
14.5HR Poppy Perinatal

BA in Creative Writing
MA Critical Methodologies
Phd Modern Languages

workshops & cpd

18HR Anatomy and Physiology Applied to Yoga Immersion
Emergency First Aid