I’m Sayeeda, the teacher behind Sada Yoga.
I teach yoga for people who want something more supportive, thoughtful and adaptable than being told to push harder or keep up with everyone else.
Many of the people who find their way to my classes are living with stress, trauma, chronic illness, neurodivergence, pain or fatigue. Others are complete beginners, returning after time away, or simply looking for a slower and more sustainable way to practise.
You don’t need to be flexible, confident or particularly calm. You don’t need to arrive feeling your best. My role is to offer options, explain what we are doing and help you find an approach that respects the body and energy you have that day.
Why I teach this way
My approach has been shaped by both professional training and lived experience.
Yoga first entered my life while I was struggling with addiction, poor mental health and a deeply difficult relationship with myself. At first, being asked to notice my body or sit with what I was feeling was uncomfortable. I had spent years finding ways to avoid those experiences.
But something kept drawing me back to the practice.
Yoga didn’t magically solve my problems, but what it gradually gave me was space: between a thought and an action, an urge and a decision, or a difficult feeling and the belief that I needed to escape it.
That space helped me begin relating to myself with more curiosity and less judgement. Over time, it contributed to choices that changed the entire direction of my life.
I have now been in recovery for more than six years. But my understanding of yoga continued to change when I developed chronic illness. Practices that had once felt supportive were no longer always accessible, and I had to reconsider many of the ideas I had absorbed about progress, discipline and what a “good” yoga practice should look like.
I learnt that working harder isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the more difficult, and more useful, practice is listening, adapting or stopping.
These experiences are not presented as proof that yoga can cure addiction, trauma or chronic illness. It can’t promise that. But yoga and related practices can offer meaningful support: helping us develop greater awareness, find moments of steadiness, reconnect with our bodies, respond differently to difficult thoughts and feelings, and recognise when we need rest, movement or additional support. They may not remove the circumstances we are living with, but they can change how we meet ourselves within them.
My experiences have also given me a deep respect for the complexity of people’s lives, and for how harmful simplistic wellbeing advice can be.
Lived experience, supported by training
I have been teaching yoga for more than nine years and have undertaken additional training in areas including Yoga Therapy for PTSD and CPTSD, yoga for addiction recovery and Ayurvedic lifestyle support.
My teaching brings this education together with lived experience of recovery, chronic illness and neurodivergence. It means I understand that someone may need choice rather than pressure, explanation rather than instruction alone, or permission to rest without having to justify themselves.
I’m endlessly curious about why particular practices help, when they may not, and how they can be adapted for different people. I don’t want you simply to “trust the process.” Where it is useful, I will help you understand what we are exploring, why we might be doing it and how it may support you beyond the yoga mat. I take the work seriously, but the environment itself doesn’t need to feel serious or intimidating. You are allowed to ask questions, change your mind, leave something out and remain a real human being while practising yoga.
“The practice should meet the person, not ask the person to fit the practice.”
A different relationship with yourself
I don’t believe wellbeing is about perfecting yourself, and I don’t believe you need to be fixed before you deserve care or support.
To me, yoga isn’t simply something we do. It is also a way of relating to ourselves and the world around us.
Whether we work together through a group class, an individual session, Ayurveda or the Yoga At Home library, my intention is to offer practical tools, informed guidance and space to begin exactly as you are.
The aim isn’t to turn you into somebody different. It is to help you understand yourself more deeply and find ways of working with yourself rather than constantly fighting against who you are.
Stay Connected
If you’d like to continue the conversation, you can also find me on social media. I regularly share reflections, practical tips, yoga practices, and Ayurvedic guidance to help you navigate the ups and downs of everyday life with a little more steadiness and self-compassion.