"Katrina's classes use every muscle. They are a complete body workout. My yoga practice has improved dramatically due to Katrina's thoughtful direction. My connection to each pose has deepened."
-Erin Johnson, Inverloch.
Katrina Archibald
Now a mother and part-time yoga teacher, since as far back as the age of 7, Katrina can remember spending most of her life pondering about, exploring and being lead along a path of self-knowledge, transformation, and learning about the mind-body healing connection.
Whilst travelling, living, studying and working her way around Australia and sections of the planet, she has maintained conscious awareness of ever-transforming and evolving herself and her knowledge and understanding of life - the purpose of, and her place in it - through multiple and varied work, relationship and life experiences and studies.
Katrina's Background
Commencing with Hatha yoga in her early 20's, through an on-again, off-again dedication to yoga, Katrina moved on to study and practice Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga before exploring Bikram and hot yoga, and Vinyasa-style practices.
Since as far back as the age of 7, I remember spending most of my days observing people and the world around me, being aware of and becoming ever increasingly interested in health, human behaviour, and my place in, as well as the meaning of, life.
As a highly sensitive child I was drawn to and felt a connection to realms and realities that weren’t readily recognised or discussed in my every day world, apart from some context for expression of these sentiments through our weekly Church attendances, where I resonated with the spiritual ideals and rituals, if not the principles or practises.
Occasional visits from a travelling Dutch hippy uncle and his sister, my aunt, brought information about exotic travels, yoga, astrology and all things spiritual and ‘new age’ into my life as a small child. I felt innately drawn to their worlds.
My mother herself practised yoga when I was a child and, as a family of 4, 5, 6 , 7 and then 8 children, we grew up eating little meat but lots of vegetables, soy beans, olive oil and garlic and taking brown bread, Dutch cheese and alfalfa sprout sandwiches to school, at a time when my friends were bringing white bread sandwiches with gherkins and cheese and chocolate royals or lolly pops for snacks. Whilst I didn’t exactly appreciate it at the time and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to swap lunches whenever I could, I am grateful now for the healthy living foundations my mum and her siblings gave us as kids.
A book given to me by my Uncle when I as around 7, Survival into the 21st Century by Viktoras H. Kulvinskas, of which I retain a copy of to this day, was a virtual Bible of all things considered ‘hippy’ at the time: sprouting, vegetarianism, veganism, raw food, astrology, iridology, palmistry, yoga and more, many of which were pretty ‘far out’ at the time but which are now considered mainstream.
The content, as well as the quotes from Jesus and The Essenes scattered throughout the book, resonated deeply with me. The sketches of nude, nature-loving hippies laying under trees in the sun, eating fruit, or holding hands, looked like paradise. Seeds were planted at that early age, forming the foundation of interests, beliefs and values that would evolve and carry me through to the present time.
Years later, at the end of my 17th summer, my family spontaneously (we just didn’t go home after our summer holidays) relocated from the city to our beach house, as I was going into my final secondary school, then VCE, year. Whilst far from ideal for my studies, personally, I was in teenage heaven.
But the joys of relocation didn’t override issues going on at home, and saddened, angry and destabilised by the breakdown of my parents relationship, motivated by feelings of disconnect from the world and an extreme sensitivity which I had not yet learnt to channel or ‘handle’, despite being a ‘top’ student, undecided about my scholarly direction but disinterested in following the associated conventional path of a Bachelor of Arts Degree at University, I was drawn to the lure of the beach, surfers, seeing bands out at the local pubs, escaping my inner discomfort through ‘getting out of it’ and just having fun.
Apart from the possibility of conventional psychology, which didn’t really interest me, courses in such things as yoga, astrology, coaching or personal development, even naturopathy, were rare or did not really exist as options available at that time, let alone as options suggests by private secondary college career advisors.
So, never one to do things by halves, and to the concern and distress of my family and new teachers, I left my new beachside school at the end of the first term of my final year, and moved out of home and in with my new surfer, musician, motor-bike riding (every parent’s dream) boyfriend, and his brother. There I began to explore love and relationships, ‘altered experiences’ and ‘fitting in’ in the only way I was aware of, or which felt attractive to me at the time.
A few partying, challenging, beautiful and also memory-making years later, throughout which I always held my interest in and focus on health and wellbeing, maintaining a healthy diet and exercise routine of one form or another, despite my partying and substance indulgence, the novelty and joy of partying hard was wearing thin and I as struggling in my relationship. I knew I was made for a different life and I really wanted to travel. I turned to focusing on my interest in wholistic therapies, commencing with naturopathy.
After a year and a half of studies, in one particular and memorable lesson, I learnt that our mental and emotional worlds were more powerful even than our physical worlds (ie. you could eat and ingest all the healthy things you like, but if you were not mentally and emotionally healthy you would still get, or remain, sick). This got me thinking. Still struggling with my ‘double life’, tiring of the two-hour drive each way, twice a week, after work, to my place of study, and having, since that lesson, decided that, whilst interesting, naturopathy was not my ‘it’, I terminated my studies.
During that time, and since I had left school, I had fallen into working in Disability Services. There, I had first hand experience and some training in behaviour modification, the workings of our brains and how we learn, and hence, how to teach. I stayed in that job for 5 years. But towards the end of that time, still struggling in my relationship, and still escaping through drugs and alcohol, despite intentions to the contrary, my sensitive body, mind and being protested until I could no longer ignore their (my inner) increasingly insistent messages.
I stopped ‘numbing out’ on alcohol and substances, but with ongoing relationship issues and an inability to reconcile having to administer so many pharmaceutical drugs to clients whilst being passionate about wholistic wellbeing and health, I eventually left-my relationship and my job-and hence began a new chapter, a chapter which would initiate my ‘travelling years’.
I started with a trip to Cairns. I did the back pack thing, saw the sites, partied, visited my hippy uncle and his family in the Daintree forest, had fun and came home. It was my first trip alone and it gave me the confidence to realise I could do it. It also reinforced my dream of living in warmer climates.
I was in my early 20’s. I moved to Melbourne with a couple I knew, found work in a cafe, ended up secretly dating a guy from a popular television soapie at the time, and worked out regularly at the local gym. But by then I was struggling with bulimia and my inner anxiety and dis-ease, and still living a ‘double life’.
When that chapter began to fall apart, and my bulimia spiralled downwards I knew I had to shift things.
I had always loved the warmer weather and begin to have vivid dreams about moving up North. Inspired by the mention of health retreats in my childhood ‘Bible’, Survival into the 21st Century, I sought out and initially found work in an exchange capacity, in a health retreat, Camp Eden, in the Queensland hinterland. In line with this plan and inspired by my gym passion at the time (it was the late 80’s) I undertook a fitness training course.
Despite my struggles, and in a constant endeavour to understand and ‘conquer’ them, and myself, I persisted with my dream, and also enrolled in a massage course in what would become my new home on the Gold Coast.
Not long after moving to Queensland and commencing my work exchange at Camp Eden, I secured paid work there, as a fitness assessor, thanks to my Fitness Trainers qualification (as per plan). When the exchange program, which included accomodation, came to and end, I easily found a share house room on the nearby Gold Coast, with a beautiful couple and another young guy who also worked at Camp Eden. I enrolled in a ‘re-birthing’ course alongside my massage course, and for the first time ever, things were really falling into place. I felt I had found my place, that I ‘fitted in’. I was living my ‘dream life’ and surrounded by like-minded people.
But I was still struggling, I was still not ‘healed’. After a series of wake-up call events, I eventually fell apart, still lost, still destroying myself with bulimia, and after a total ‘breakdown’ one day when I just could not go into work, I ended up leaving the health retreat.
Lost, depressed, on a whim and out of desperation, I went looking for help, inspiration-anything-at a different retreat I had read about. I can’t remember the ‘excuse’ I used for visiting, but I just turned up there. When I arrived, unannounced, most of the staff were away. Only one person was there to greet me-an accomplished professional astrologer, Chris. This ‘chance’ meeting would change my life, again.
After an immediate connection, an in-depth discussion about my life crisis ensued. Unable to afford the full reading Chris suggested I take, I left, feeling at least hopeful and amazed at the little he had already told me.
Collapsing into a deep sleep back at home that same afternoon, I was ‘visited’ by my ‘ex’ in what felt like a prophetic dream, and on waking, I received a call from Chris. That beautiful astrologer whom I had met earlier that day, and who had initially offered me only a paid consultation, told me that he had gone ahead and done a reading for me anyway. He proceeded to tell me the most helpful, accurate and reassuring things anyone had ever shared with me-about myself, about my strengths and my challenges, about my ‘pain’ and about what was going on in my life at that time, and the astrological reasons behind these things.
That astrologer, who I had only just met, knew me better and more intricately than anyone I had ever encountered, and he gave me a context and a language through which I could understand my life and my self (and later, others) from the inside out.
From that day on, astrology became and remains one of my most valued and cherished ‘tools’ and I began to study it and the charts of anyone I could access, with a passion. Apart from the assistance it gave me personally, I loved the feeling and sense of worth and service, that helping others to understand themselves and their lives gave me.
The other gift that Chris shared with me, was the knowledge of the powers of the subconscious and a technique for manifesting whatever I desired. This was long before films like The Secret appeared in the general media, and long before the mainstream and anyone I knew was really talking about things such as the Law of Attraction.
Chris told me that my true power lay within, and not without. He explained how, based on what he saw in my chart, my best way of getting what I needed or wanted was not in pushing and forcing things on the outside but in doing inner work. He gave me a technique for visualising and feeling into what I wanted to manifest, dropping it into my subconscious and then getting on with whatever gave me joy at the time and trusting that I would align with whatever I needed or wanted. He asked me what I really wanted to manifest in my life at that time. I told him that I was exhausted, and that all I wanted to do was to lay on a beach in the sun, swim in the ocean, and rest.
Within weeks that dream become a reality, through a series of events and synchronicities that I could never have conceived of, controlled, or instigated myself. I found myself in Bali, Indonesia in the role of an assistant to a professional surf photographer I had known for years, who had suddenly, synchronistically appeared in my life on the Gold Coast at that time. I
In the excitement of the turn my life was taking, I had wondered if this was maybe the direction of my future, but it was not to be. Instead, what I found in Bali was the beginning of my long standing exploration and practise of yoga, and the beginning of the end of my struggle with bulimia,
What I found in Bali, walking into a class of sweaty incredibly fit and healthy looking much-older-than-me at the time women with one of the world surfers on tour there at the time, who had invited me along, was a practice of yoga that I felt I had been searching for without knowing it, since I was just a child. My mum practiced yoga when we were young and I had tried it once or twice before with an idea in mind, from where I don’t know, of what yoga was seeking. To date, I had not yet found the power, discipline, strength and healing powers of those women doing what I would learn was Ashtanga Yoga. Something in me knew that this was what I had been looking for.
There are those who say that Bali is the heart chakra of the world. Bali was indeed a healing place for me and a turning point where I ceased to focus so much on the personal needs and desires of the 3 lower chakras and turned my development to the ares above the heat charka-my Higher self. Whilst my first two months in Bali were spent partying and trying not to be bulimic, Life pulled me into l when I was trapped in a room with a local man who I believed was going to rape. This scared and shocked me into having a look at myself (again). I knew I was getting a warning and from that night I stopped partying and started looking after myself, practising the 5-Tibetans and a version of my own yoga. I would get u early with the locals, walk, swim and do yoga on the beach, connect with and write big letters home about the local people and culture from cafes during the day, then go to bed early at night. I started to look after myself properly for the first time since my teenage escapism began.
In Bali I also had my budding astrology passion supported through another synchronistic meeting with a fellow astrology-lover in the World surf circuit team, a lovely man who gifted me with my first astrology book.
Over the ensuing months and years, yoga, astrology, healing, spirituality, travel, observing the synchronicities of my life when I was ‘on track’ and playing with manifesting became my areas of focus. I went from one experience, adventure (and often relationship) to another, travelling around Australia and, at times, the world.
And through it all I would share my love of whatever healing or personal or spiritual development tool I was currently investigating or practising with whomsoever I synchronistically would meet and who needed that information at the time. I loved sharing my knowledge and tools and the connections I made through sharing them, as well as the feeling of increasingly playing a role of a catalyst in the lives of others. I seemed to often connect with people on the brink of change. This continues to this day.
Whilst my life and life focus changed considerably when I became a single mother in 2010, my passion and purpose has not. I continue to find passion in working with others to help them to create change in their lives and to remember Who They Truly Are.
Through the ASCEND with Katrina Archibald programs, tools, products and services, I invite you to profit from my life exploration of yoga, astrology, wholistic wellbeing, personal transformation and self-empowerment on your journey towards greater fitness & health, wellbeing, purpose, self-empowerment and, ultimately, ascension into higher and finer and ever more authentic and integrated levels of expression.
We are in pivotal and transformative times and faced with so much change and uncertainty in many ways and yet so much potential for bringing in the new in other ways there is no better time, no more responsible thing that any of us can do right now than to really come into our purpose.
By honouring our hearts deepest calling and stepping into the expression of our greatest self, we raise own vibrational frequency as well as that of our whole planet. And in doing so, becoming more powerful and clear magnets to all that we hold in our heart.
When I was 7 years old I came to two realisations:
I would love to help you identify, nurture and powerfully express your piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
To your Freedom to Thrive,
With Love,
Katrina
Some of my omplementary studies, work and life experiences include:
A deep immersion into a yoga practise cannot but have for consequence an influence on the entire lifestyle, and become, thus, a 'way of life'. The responsibilities which go along with teaching yoga have been Katrina's greatest motivators, inspiring her own personal practise, in order to facilitate her being able to teach from a place of knowing and understanding the breath and asana (pose) practise from the inside out, as well as fostering and inspiring an ever-refining, organic evolution and expansion of awareness, and an ever-deepening attunement to the needs of the body, mind and heart.
This awareness and sensitivity increasingly permeates all levels of existence and related choices for those who practice yoga regularly, as it has for Katrina: from foods taken, environments and relationships desired- sensitivity develops to what is appropriate on every level. The yogi endeavours to create and maintain a state of ever-evolving balance and wellbeing: an outer life which reflects the inner, a state of being which reflects an optimal attunement to self, the bigger picture and the inner Truth in each moment, thus constantly refining and enhancing the yogis individual expression, performance or 'contribution' along a chosen path.
Complementary studies, work and life experiences include:
Katrina is registered with Yoga Australia as a Level 1 Yoga Teacher (Member No. 2177) and is fully insured for public liability and professional indemnity.
Despite (and thanks to) many detours, and the many different paths that she found herself exploring, the primary constant in her life, to which she regularly returned, has been yoga, which she is honoured to share with you today.
Katrina is mum to a 10-year old daughter, living in beautiful, seaside Inverloch, in South West Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.
-Erin Johnson, Inverloch.
Katrina Archibald
Now a mother and part-time yoga teacher, since as far back as the age of 7, Katrina can remember spending most of her life pondering about, exploring and being lead along a path of self-knowledge, transformation, and learning about the mind-body healing connection.
Whilst travelling, living, studying and working her way around Australia and sections of the planet, she has maintained conscious awareness of ever-transforming and evolving herself and her knowledge and understanding of life - the purpose of, and her place in it - through multiple and varied work, relationship and life experiences and studies.
Katrina's Background
Commencing with Hatha yoga in her early 20's, through an on-again, off-again dedication to yoga, Katrina moved on to study and practice Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga before exploring Bikram and hot yoga, and Vinyasa-style practices.
Since as far back as the age of 7, I remember spending most of my days observing people and the world around me, being aware of and becoming ever increasingly interested in health, human behaviour, and my place in, as well as the meaning of, life.
As a highly sensitive child I was drawn to and felt a connection to realms and realities that weren’t readily recognised or discussed in my every day world, apart from some context for expression of these sentiments through our weekly Church attendances, where I resonated with the spiritual ideals and rituals, if not the principles or practises.
Occasional visits from a travelling Dutch hippy uncle and his sister, my aunt, brought information about exotic travels, yoga, astrology and all things spiritual and ‘new age’ into my life as a small child. I felt innately drawn to their worlds.
My mother herself practised yoga when I was a child and, as a family of 4, 5, 6 , 7 and then 8 children, we grew up eating little meat but lots of vegetables, soy beans, olive oil and garlic and taking brown bread, Dutch cheese and alfalfa sprout sandwiches to school, at a time when my friends were bringing white bread sandwiches with gherkins and cheese and chocolate royals or lolly pops for snacks. Whilst I didn’t exactly appreciate it at the time and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to swap lunches whenever I could, I am grateful now for the healthy living foundations my mum and her siblings gave us as kids.
A book given to me by my Uncle when I as around 7, Survival into the 21st Century by Viktoras H. Kulvinskas, of which I retain a copy of to this day, was a virtual Bible of all things considered ‘hippy’ at the time: sprouting, vegetarianism, veganism, raw food, astrology, iridology, palmistry, yoga and more, many of which were pretty ‘far out’ at the time but which are now considered mainstream.
The content, as well as the quotes from Jesus and The Essenes scattered throughout the book, resonated deeply with me. The sketches of nude, nature-loving hippies laying under trees in the sun, eating fruit, or holding hands, looked like paradise. Seeds were planted at that early age, forming the foundation of interests, beliefs and values that would evolve and carry me through to the present time.
Years later, at the end of my 17th summer, my family spontaneously (we just didn’t go home after our summer holidays) relocated from the city to our beach house, as I was going into my final secondary school, then VCE, year. Whilst far from ideal for my studies, personally, I was in teenage heaven.
But the joys of relocation didn’t override issues going on at home, and saddened, angry and destabilised by the breakdown of my parents relationship, motivated by feelings of disconnect from the world and an extreme sensitivity which I had not yet learnt to channel or ‘handle’, despite being a ‘top’ student, undecided about my scholarly direction but disinterested in following the associated conventional path of a Bachelor of Arts Degree at University, I was drawn to the lure of the beach, surfers, seeing bands out at the local pubs, escaping my inner discomfort through ‘getting out of it’ and just having fun.
Apart from the possibility of conventional psychology, which didn’t really interest me, courses in such things as yoga, astrology, coaching or personal development, even naturopathy, were rare or did not really exist as options available at that time, let alone as options suggests by private secondary college career advisors.
So, never one to do things by halves, and to the concern and distress of my family and new teachers, I left my new beachside school at the end of the first term of my final year, and moved out of home and in with my new surfer, musician, motor-bike riding (every parent’s dream) boyfriend, and his brother. There I began to explore love and relationships, ‘altered experiences’ and ‘fitting in’ in the only way I was aware of, or which felt attractive to me at the time.
A few partying, challenging, beautiful and also memory-making years later, throughout which I always held my interest in and focus on health and wellbeing, maintaining a healthy diet and exercise routine of one form or another, despite my partying and substance indulgence, the novelty and joy of partying hard was wearing thin and I as struggling in my relationship. I knew I was made for a different life and I really wanted to travel. I turned to focusing on my interest in wholistic therapies, commencing with naturopathy.
After a year and a half of studies, in one particular and memorable lesson, I learnt that our mental and emotional worlds were more powerful even than our physical worlds (ie. you could eat and ingest all the healthy things you like, but if you were not mentally and emotionally healthy you would still get, or remain, sick). This got me thinking. Still struggling with my ‘double life’, tiring of the two-hour drive each way, twice a week, after work, to my place of study, and having, since that lesson, decided that, whilst interesting, naturopathy was not my ‘it’, I terminated my studies.
During that time, and since I had left school, I had fallen into working in Disability Services. There, I had first hand experience and some training in behaviour modification, the workings of our brains and how we learn, and hence, how to teach. I stayed in that job for 5 years. But towards the end of that time, still struggling in my relationship, and still escaping through drugs and alcohol, despite intentions to the contrary, my sensitive body, mind and being protested until I could no longer ignore their (my inner) increasingly insistent messages.
I stopped ‘numbing out’ on alcohol and substances, but with ongoing relationship issues and an inability to reconcile having to administer so many pharmaceutical drugs to clients whilst being passionate about wholistic wellbeing and health, I eventually left-my relationship and my job-and hence began a new chapter, a chapter which would initiate my ‘travelling years’.
I started with a trip to Cairns. I did the back pack thing, saw the sites, partied, visited my hippy uncle and his family in the Daintree forest, had fun and came home. It was my first trip alone and it gave me the confidence to realise I could do it. It also reinforced my dream of living in warmer climates.
I was in my early 20’s. I moved to Melbourne with a couple I knew, found work in a cafe, ended up secretly dating a guy from a popular television soapie at the time, and worked out regularly at the local gym. But by then I was struggling with bulimia and my inner anxiety and dis-ease, and still living a ‘double life’.
When that chapter began to fall apart, and my bulimia spiralled downwards I knew I had to shift things.
I had always loved the warmer weather and begin to have vivid dreams about moving up North. Inspired by the mention of health retreats in my childhood ‘Bible’, Survival into the 21st Century, I sought out and initially found work in an exchange capacity, in a health retreat, Camp Eden, in the Queensland hinterland. In line with this plan and inspired by my gym passion at the time (it was the late 80’s) I undertook a fitness training course.
Despite my struggles, and in a constant endeavour to understand and ‘conquer’ them, and myself, I persisted with my dream, and also enrolled in a massage course in what would become my new home on the Gold Coast.
Not long after moving to Queensland and commencing my work exchange at Camp Eden, I secured paid work there, as a fitness assessor, thanks to my Fitness Trainers qualification (as per plan). When the exchange program, which included accomodation, came to and end, I easily found a share house room on the nearby Gold Coast, with a beautiful couple and another young guy who also worked at Camp Eden. I enrolled in a ‘re-birthing’ course alongside my massage course, and for the first time ever, things were really falling into place. I felt I had found my place, that I ‘fitted in’. I was living my ‘dream life’ and surrounded by like-minded people.
But I was still struggling, I was still not ‘healed’. After a series of wake-up call events, I eventually fell apart, still lost, still destroying myself with bulimia, and after a total ‘breakdown’ one day when I just could not go into work, I ended up leaving the health retreat.
Lost, depressed, on a whim and out of desperation, I went looking for help, inspiration-anything-at a different retreat I had read about. I can’t remember the ‘excuse’ I used for visiting, but I just turned up there. When I arrived, unannounced, most of the staff were away. Only one person was there to greet me-an accomplished professional astrologer, Chris. This ‘chance’ meeting would change my life, again.
After an immediate connection, an in-depth discussion about my life crisis ensued. Unable to afford the full reading Chris suggested I take, I left, feeling at least hopeful and amazed at the little he had already told me.
Collapsing into a deep sleep back at home that same afternoon, I was ‘visited’ by my ‘ex’ in what felt like a prophetic dream, and on waking, I received a call from Chris. That beautiful astrologer whom I had met earlier that day, and who had initially offered me only a paid consultation, told me that he had gone ahead and done a reading for me anyway. He proceeded to tell me the most helpful, accurate and reassuring things anyone had ever shared with me-about myself, about my strengths and my challenges, about my ‘pain’ and about what was going on in my life at that time, and the astrological reasons behind these things.
That astrologer, who I had only just met, knew me better and more intricately than anyone I had ever encountered, and he gave me a context and a language through which I could understand my life and my self (and later, others) from the inside out.
From that day on, astrology became and remains one of my most valued and cherished ‘tools’ and I began to study it and the charts of anyone I could access, with a passion. Apart from the assistance it gave me personally, I loved the feeling and sense of worth and service, that helping others to understand themselves and their lives gave me.
The other gift that Chris shared with me, was the knowledge of the powers of the subconscious and a technique for manifesting whatever I desired. This was long before films like The Secret appeared in the general media, and long before the mainstream and anyone I knew was really talking about things such as the Law of Attraction.
Chris told me that my true power lay within, and not without. He explained how, based on what he saw in my chart, my best way of getting what I needed or wanted was not in pushing and forcing things on the outside but in doing inner work. He gave me a technique for visualising and feeling into what I wanted to manifest, dropping it into my subconscious and then getting on with whatever gave me joy at the time and trusting that I would align with whatever I needed or wanted. He asked me what I really wanted to manifest in my life at that time. I told him that I was exhausted, and that all I wanted to do was to lay on a beach in the sun, swim in the ocean, and rest.
Within weeks that dream become a reality, through a series of events and synchronicities that I could never have conceived of, controlled, or instigated myself. I found myself in Bali, Indonesia in the role of an assistant to a professional surf photographer I had known for years, who had suddenly, synchronistically appeared in my life on the Gold Coast at that time. I
In the excitement of the turn my life was taking, I had wondered if this was maybe the direction of my future, but it was not to be. Instead, what I found in Bali was the beginning of my long standing exploration and practise of yoga, and the beginning of the end of my struggle with bulimia,
What I found in Bali, walking into a class of sweaty incredibly fit and healthy looking much-older-than-me at the time women with one of the world surfers on tour there at the time, who had invited me along, was a practice of yoga that I felt I had been searching for without knowing it, since I was just a child. My mum practiced yoga when we were young and I had tried it once or twice before with an idea in mind, from where I don’t know, of what yoga was seeking. To date, I had not yet found the power, discipline, strength and healing powers of those women doing what I would learn was Ashtanga Yoga. Something in me knew that this was what I had been looking for.
There are those who say that Bali is the heart chakra of the world. Bali was indeed a healing place for me and a turning point where I ceased to focus so much on the personal needs and desires of the 3 lower chakras and turned my development to the ares above the heat charka-my Higher self. Whilst my first two months in Bali were spent partying and trying not to be bulimic, Life pulled me into l when I was trapped in a room with a local man who I believed was going to rape. This scared and shocked me into having a look at myself (again). I knew I was getting a warning and from that night I stopped partying and started looking after myself, practising the 5-Tibetans and a version of my own yoga. I would get u early with the locals, walk, swim and do yoga on the beach, connect with and write big letters home about the local people and culture from cafes during the day, then go to bed early at night. I started to look after myself properly for the first time since my teenage escapism began.
In Bali I also had my budding astrology passion supported through another synchronistic meeting with a fellow astrology-lover in the World surf circuit team, a lovely man who gifted me with my first astrology book.
Over the ensuing months and years, yoga, astrology, healing, spirituality, travel, observing the synchronicities of my life when I was ‘on track’ and playing with manifesting became my areas of focus. I went from one experience, adventure (and often relationship) to another, travelling around Australia and, at times, the world.
And through it all I would share my love of whatever healing or personal or spiritual development tool I was currently investigating or practising with whomsoever I synchronistically would meet and who needed that information at the time. I loved sharing my knowledge and tools and the connections I made through sharing them, as well as the feeling of increasingly playing a role of a catalyst in the lives of others. I seemed to often connect with people on the brink of change. This continues to this day.
Whilst my life and life focus changed considerably when I became a single mother in 2010, my passion and purpose has not. I continue to find passion in working with others to help them to create change in their lives and to remember Who They Truly Are.
Through the ASCEND with Katrina Archibald programs, tools, products and services, I invite you to profit from my life exploration of yoga, astrology, wholistic wellbeing, personal transformation and self-empowerment on your journey towards greater fitness & health, wellbeing, purpose, self-empowerment and, ultimately, ascension into higher and finer and ever more authentic and integrated levels of expression.
We are in pivotal and transformative times and faced with so much change and uncertainty in many ways and yet so much potential for bringing in the new in other ways there is no better time, no more responsible thing that any of us can do right now than to really come into our purpose.
By honouring our hearts deepest calling and stepping into the expression of our greatest self, we raise own vibrational frequency as well as that of our whole planet. And in doing so, becoming more powerful and clear magnets to all that we hold in our heart.
When I was 7 years old I came to two realisations:
- That no-one could be me and that I could not possibly be anyone else. The world depended on my place in it and no-one else could exist as they were, without me being in the world. Through much reflection on a fleeting desire to BE the friend at school who I thought ’had it all’ I realised that her existence, as it was, had me in it, as her friend, which meant that her being her was intricately connected to my being me, and playing the role I played in my life. That she could not exist as she was, without me, and so I could not be her because her life required a Katrina Archibald and I couldn’t be her and me.
- All of us are unique and yet if the whole of nature ‘fits together perfectly’, so too must we, as humans be able to fit into our environment as well as in life with each other, perfectly as well. I saw that we were all like tiny, unique pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle and that if each of us played our own, individual role perfectly, we would all ‘fit’ perfectly together too. We are not built to all play out or fit into a very limited number of roles presented as the acceptable ones, no matter what our culture or nation. We are all born individuals, with a unique and specific set of characteristics, skills, talents and challenges that are the mud from which our lotus grows and the combination of talents and life experiences on which our particular brand of expertise is based. The greater gift we can give the world is to express that individuality and our gifts, to offer our unique perspective to the world.
I would love to help you identify, nurture and powerfully express your piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
To your Freedom to Thrive,
With Love,
Katrina
Some of my omplementary studies, work and life experiences include:
- Certificate of Infant Massage Instruction with the Infant Massage Information Service(IMIS)
- 2 x 10-day Vipassana Meditation retreats;
- Buddhist summer retreat in Bordeaux, France, with Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh;
- Living and working in health and wholistic retreats in Australia and overseas, namely, Camp Eden in Queensland, Australia, and The Practice Place (now, Yoga Plus) in Crete, Greece;
- Certificate IV in Life Coaching;
- Lifeline telephone counselling;
- Teaching English to children and adults for a number of years whilst living in France;
- Certificate IV in Intellectual Disability Services, with many years spent working with intellectually disabled children and adults;
- Natural Fertility Management with Francesca Naisch.
- Advanced Astrological Studies and Tarot studies with Stella Woods in Melbourne
A deep immersion into a yoga practise cannot but have for consequence an influence on the entire lifestyle, and become, thus, a 'way of life'. The responsibilities which go along with teaching yoga have been Katrina's greatest motivators, inspiring her own personal practise, in order to facilitate her being able to teach from a place of knowing and understanding the breath and asana (pose) practise from the inside out, as well as fostering and inspiring an ever-refining, organic evolution and expansion of awareness, and an ever-deepening attunement to the needs of the body, mind and heart.
This awareness and sensitivity increasingly permeates all levels of existence and related choices for those who practice yoga regularly, as it has for Katrina: from foods taken, environments and relationships desired- sensitivity develops to what is appropriate on every level. The yogi endeavours to create and maintain a state of ever-evolving balance and wellbeing: an outer life which reflects the inner, a state of being which reflects an optimal attunement to self, the bigger picture and the inner Truth in each moment, thus constantly refining and enhancing the yogis individual expression, performance or 'contribution' along a chosen path.
Complementary studies, work and life experiences include:
- Certificate of Infant Massage Instruction with the Infant Massage Information Service(IMIS)
- 2 x 10-day Vipassana Meditation retreats;
- Buddhist summer retreat in Bordeaux, France, with Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh;
- Living and working in health and wholistic retreats in Australia and overseas, namely, Camp Eden in Queensland, Australia, and The Practice Place (now, Yoga Plus) in Crete, Greece;
- Certificate IV in Life Coaching;
- Lifeline telephone counselling;
- Teaching English to children and adults for a number of years whilst living in France;
- Certificate IV in Intellectual Disability Services, with many years spent working with intellectually disabled children and adults;
- Natural Fertility Management with Francesca Naisch.
Katrina is registered with Yoga Australia as a Level 1 Yoga Teacher (Member No. 2177) and is fully insured for public liability and professional indemnity.
Despite (and thanks to) many detours, and the many different paths that she found herself exploring, the primary constant in her life, to which she regularly returned, has been yoga, which she is honoured to share with you today.
Katrina is mum to a 10-year old daughter, living in beautiful, seaside Inverloch, in South West Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.
