Our Team
Sonja Lockyer
Host Teacher
Sonja is the host of The Wellbeing Ritual Club, and teacher of breath practices, meditation, yoga, qoya, and yoga nidra. Having taught thousands of students over a career spanning nearly 20 years, Sonja brings her whole heart, a wealth of education and rich experience to our live sessions.
On occasion, whilst Sonja is studying for her craniosacral therapy training, we will have these wonderful teachers filling in to cover the live sessions.
For Yoga
Rachael Waring
Rachel is a firm believer in healing through our connection with our breath, our bodies and the natural world. This belief permeates everything she does, from her organic and intuitive flowing yoga classes, to her homegrown and foraged vegetarian and plant-based recipes, and her wildcrafted plant medicine. These are all things which have helped her through difficult times and she hopes to share them with you.
Her classes flow organically and mindfully from pose to pose, whether in the form of a gentle and nourishing restorative practice, or a playful and challenging vinyasa class. Her deep understanding and appreciation of anatomy and physiology and the impact yoga has on our physical, mental and emotional well-being informs and underpins everything she shares in class.
Helen McCabe
Helen is a mum and grandmother who lives on the Purbeck coast with her husband Paul. She is the director and founder of Yoga at The Space, a beautiful little community practice space in Dorset. Having trained in textile and fashion design originally, her professional life over the last 30 years has included successful careers in both the film industry and as a garden designer (she ran her own design company for 10 years). Underpinning all of this though has been her personal yoga practice and, latterly, her passion for sharing these tools.
Helen has practiced yoga since 1991 and has been teaching for over 17 years. She teaches with a gentle, inclusive, and encouraging approach and is passionate about supporting students to connect to the energetic and meditative aspects of the practice of yoga, supporting them to develop a resourcing self-practice of their own, as a powerful tool for self-inquiry.
Helen is particularly passionate about finding ways to make these practices as accessible as possible within the broader community. Her involvement with the Urban Yogis UK organisation is a very important part of this work. Urban Yogis UK provides support to young people and communities by sharing Yoga practices, with the aim is to make Yoga accessible to all so that it breaks down social-economic, gender, cultural, and any other barriers that prevent people from practicing.
For Meditation & Breath
Marisa Whitty
Marisa Whitty has been working with healing modalities for over 20 years. Recently she has focussed on teaching Mindfulness in schools, running regular Mindfulness meditation courses and workshops for families, educators and workplace-employees, as well as offering Yoga Nidra and Qoya classes. The intention is simply to share tools with as many people of all ages to remember the healing potential within themselves.
Whilst Mindfulness and Nidra are largely rooted in stillness and quiet contemplation, noticing the ebb and flow of thoughts, emotions and sensations from a space within, Qoya is based on the idea of tuning into the vibrational energy of music, rhythm and dance, to drop out of the thinking mind and into the wisdom of the body through movement.
All of these modalities have one thing in common which is to connect mind and body, explore ways to drop into present moment awareness, to live a more awakened connected life. We spend so much of our time lost in thought; worrying, planning, remembering past events, that we lose sight of the present moment. Tuning into what is true for us in this moment is hugely liberating, deeply revealing, and incredibly healing.
Jo Cruickshanks
Weaving together storytelling, a belief in nature and fundamental wholeness, and an ever-deepening trust in her body as a self-organising, intelligent system that houses her soul, Jo's work is a blend of somatic awareness, breathwork, and creativity to journey from trusting in others to trusting in her system first.
It's the work she wishes she had when she was building and growing a purposeful-storytelling agency whilst having kids, trying to juggle everything whilst at the same time figuring things out. She felt her nervous system was overloaded and that meant she second-guessed herself daily, even hourly.
Today Jo's work is all about birthing and breathing life into things in the world from the ground of the body's innate intelligence. This is how she believes that true change can emerge in the way we work and create in the world because when we work like this, we realise we ARE the Earth.
For Qoya
Elisabet Alfstad
Elisabet Alfstad is devoted to explore life’s meaning and mysteries, & her fiery passion for revealing and living your highest truth- in love with your life - has resulted in certifications in several healing modalities such as Qoya, Master of Angelic Reiki, Seraphim healing, Quantum healing, Psych-K, Womb healing and Sacred Union rituals. Her deep-rooted love and respect for Mother Nature led her to study holistic health and herbal medicine, & in 2018 she became a Naturopath.
Her practice of SACRED SCROLLS came into creation over 15 years ago, when she was passing through one of her most challenging times in life. As miracles started unfolding, she knew that these scrolls hold immense power when written in harmony with the laws of the Universe.
Marisa Whitty
Marisa trained as a Qoya teacher back in 2018 and has spent the past few years integrating her learning into her life and work with Mindfulness and Yoga Nidra. Marisa has worked with healing modalities and meditation for over 20 years with the intention to share tools with as many people of all ages to remember the healing potential within themselves.
Whilst Mindfulness and Nidra are largely rooted in stillness and quiet contemplation, Qoya is based on the idea of tuning into the vibrational energy of music, rhythm and dance, to drop out of the thinking mind and into the wisdom of the body through movement. As we grow older we often seem to tune out of the feeling tones in the body, often disconnecting from the pleasure to be had in moving our bodies freely. In short we dance less.
Qoya helps us to remember our true essence, to rediscover our wild side before we got tangled up in rules and expectations.
All of these modalities have one thing in common which is to connect mind and body, to explore ways of dropping into present moment awareness, to live a more awakened connected joyful whole-hearted life.