Meet Erica: Children's Yoga Teacher

I’m Erica, a writer, creative writing teacher, and yoga teacher. I’m currently writing my second book and researching my third, which means my life contains a horrible amount of SITTING. For about 15 years, yoga was the counterpart to my being hunched over my laptop all day, and recently it’s been a lifeline following an ADHD diagnosis. I finally did my teacher training last year with Yogahaven, and having a strong home practice has been transformative.

One thing that drew me to children’s yoga is that I wish I’d had it growing up. Also, while a lot of people lose their inner child as they get older, mine is still hanging around and it's a wonderful way of giving her something useful to do!

What’s your proudest career achievement?

It’s a three-way toss-up between: becoming a yoga teacher; getting hired as a features writer at the Guardian after a blog I ran about the unemployment crisis went viral; and the publication of my first book, This Party’s Dead, in which I travelled to death festivals all over the world in an attempt to understand our relationship with grief and death (and yes, the death parties were really, really fun!).

What’s your favourite family memory?

I was at a cafe in Camden Market with my mum and sister. When we got up to leave, we were blocked in by a pram containing a sleeping baby. We didn’t want to wake the little guy, so we made the bizarre decision to leave by climbing over the wall separating the cafe from the market. It wasn’t that high, so it made sense at the time, but when we started doing it we realised we looked completely nutty. My mum got briefly stuck at the top because she couldn’t catch her breath from laughing, and my sister cried out, “We can’t do this to Mum, she’s MIDDLE AGED!” And the Londoners around us, god love them, didn’t bat an eye.

What’s the best piece of advice a family member has given you?

Never chase a bus, a train or a boy: there will always be another one along later.

Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?

No, but I also don’t sneer at people who do. The world is vast and random and confusing, and we all have our own ways to find patterns and make sense of the chaos. Don’t yuck somebody’s yum!

Are you active on social media, or do you prefer to be more private?

I used to be very active on it (as a journalist you sort of have to be), and one of my tweets going viral is how an editor at a publisher found and got interested in my book project – but now I find myself retreating from the noise.

Have you ever had imposter syndrome?

HA! I have been telling people for YEARS that I am an imposter and nobody believes me...