Ever since I was a young girl, I felt different from the rest. Maybe it had something to do with being the first born daughter of young Pakistani immigrant newly-weds, who had just moved to Houston 9 months before I was born. Growing up in Houston and having to take ESL, I never truly felt like I belonged anywhere. I was socially awkward and oblivious when it came to unspoken social cues. My parent's would dismiss it as naivety or childishness - but I was acutely aware of the superficiality of the growing up process and I wasn't quite ready to conform.

Curious about life and philosophical by nature, I graduated with a B.S. in Psychology  from the University of Houston in 2005. Studying psychology, anthropology, religion, sociology and philosophy opened my eyes to a whole new perspective on life... and my relentless desire for intellectual understanding made me question everything I had previously believed. I endured the discomfort of stripping it all away, and started with a clean slate. That was just the beginning of my journey towards a spiritual awakening...

Fast forward to 2013, when I happened to stumble upon yoga by chance. We had just moved to Austin from Houston the previous year, and my second child was 6 months old. I was getting back to the gym and looking for new ways to lose the extra 60 pounds of baby weight I had gained. 

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To say that yoga changed my life would be an understatement. I started for the physical benefits... but for the first time ever, I felt like I had found the language of my soul. The philosophy felt strangely familiar and resonated with my empathic heart. As a wife and a mother of two young kids, I yearned for the inner peace and calmness that yoga delivered. I became reacquainted with my true self. My passion for yoga quickly snowballed as I discovered confidence and inner strength that I never even knew existed. I acquired my 200 hour teacher training certification at Dharma Yoga in 2015, completed 300 hours of Advanced Teacher Training at Practice Yoga Austin in 2018, and 50 hours of Trauma Informed YTT at Yoga Yoga in March of 2019, with numerous smaller trainings since then. I've had the privilege to teach everyone from young kids to seniors, from pregnant women to the Austin SWAT team, and internationally through my yoga videos. I am also the founder of the Austin Yoga Teachers Community Facebook group, which was born out of the intention to stay connected and continue learning among other teachers. We are over 600 members, and growing. I look forward to continual evolution and being a student for life.