Welcome to Amrit Jiwan. The home of what I give — teaching yoga and mindfulness, healing, coaching, gong baths and kirtan (singing). My aim is to bring more peace and happiness to you and help you to reconnect with yourself and what is most important to you in your life.

Amrit Jiwan (pronounced Jeevan) means Nectar of Life. I was given the name in the Kundalini yoga tradition, one of the elements that I share. To me Amrit Jiwan means the joy at the heart of life — the sort of joy that isn't dependent on having that car or that job or that person in your life. The joy that is your essential nature. I hope you can all remember a time when you felt that joy, for no reason at all.

I offer kundalini yoga sessions and group classes, kirtan chanting, mindfulness meditation, healing and coaching. And I write reflections on life and offer practices for meeting life with a bit more ease and grace. All of these are aimed at reconnecting you with yourself and with life. You are on life's journey. If you feel like it's not on the track that you want, maybe I can help.

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Experience

I have been teaching kundalini yoga since 2016. I did my teacher training Level 1 and Level 2 with the amazing Har Nal Kaur and Amrit Nam Sarovar. 

I have a lovely weekly class: in Surbiton on Thursdays. I also help people with their practice on a 1-1 basis. It is really inspiring to see what a difference yoga can make for people. The 60 year old lady who couldn't sit cross legged at her first class and came to every class that she could and can now sit in half lotus. The lady who seemed so fragile when she first came and is now a power house. But mostly it's in their faces, they look brighter, happier, like they have shed a burden, and it's such a pleasure to share these teachings that can enable this.

"I found Amrit friendly and welcoming and immediately warmed to her. Her way of teaching allows me to go at my own pace and I never feel that I am being judged by her for stopping mid kriya or not being able to reach my toes! She is very kind and supportive and recognises the variety of difficulties that can get in the way of yoga practice. Amrit has a skilful way of offering encouragement so that I push myself a bit further than I think I can go."

/  Nicola H  /

Kirtan, chanting or singing mantras, is a form of bhakti yoga - a yoga of the heart, of love and devotion. It doesn’t matter what you love, or what you are devoted to, whether for you that is spiritual, religious or simply the beauty and majesty of nature, or art or music. Or perhaps you haven’t had that experience of profound awe and love or longing and inspiration yet?

Kirtan has a magical affect on the heart and mind. It can heal the heart, that sense of separation and loneliness. Bringing a deep sense of being at home in yourself, being whole and loved within yourself and feeling oneness with all. It spring cleans the mind leaving you feeling clear, focused and energised. It can bring a sense of passion, potential and creativity and a longing to express life and enjoy it. All this just from singing mantras together. Who would have thought it?!

Kirtan works on a vibrational basis, it is a simple way to bring the mind into stillness and meditation through focusing on singing the mantra, and it makes meditation accessible to all. We sing Sanskrit mantras, ancient words from a language dedicated to the deepest understanding of life, consciousness and what it is to be human.

You don’t need to have a great voice or be a particular type of person to enjoy and benefit from kirtan. It is a practice for everyone; fun, uplifting and profound all at the same time.

“An inspiration! If you want to recharge, relax and refresh your soul then look no further.”

Sally Brockway

Experience

I have been leading chanting workshops since 2018, creating spaces for people to merge in meditation with the sounds and discover deep peace and silence within. In 2019 I trained with the extraordinarily talented Nikki Slade, the pioneer of Western style Kirtan in the UK, developing and deepening my ability to hold the space and use the voice, the harmonium and the drum to create a powerful heart opening experience for all.

As well as my regular kirtan workshops I have led at charity events and in people’s homes. You can listen to more chants on my YouTube channel. Please contact me if you would like to arrange a Kirtan for your event or in your home.

“I just wanted to say that Sunday was just amazing, honestly just so calming..the silence and just this sense of being with ourselves was powerful and calming to the soul. You hold the space so incredibly well...and how amazing your voice is, it goes straight to the soul. Thank you so much!”

Alisha Lewis

Sat Nam Rasayan is an ancient Yogic healing art practised hands on or remotely. Sat Nam Rasayan means Deep Relaxation in the True Identity that comes from profound meditative states where the body and mind can relax into a natural state of healing. The meditator releases blocks and resistances that hinder the patient from coming into a state of balance and healing.

"When you grow into Sat Nam Rasayan, every experience in your life will appear like an infinite possibility. That is the characteristic of the neutral mind."

— Guru Dev Singh

Experience

I have been training and practising this healing since 2016 and I discovered when I started learning it that it was something that I was already familiar with. When the mind is still, I become aware that my experience — the sensory space — changes in relationship to what I am relating to. Everything that I come into contact with changes the shape and sense of it. When there is suffering in another person I experience that suffering and I give the space it needs within the whole experience. Held in this neutral meditative mind everything has a natural inclination to release and come into balance. It is such a pleasure to give and receive this healing.

Once a week I give a free remote healing. If you would like a free healing, please add your name to the list through the form here.

"I am now completely without pain and I have never felt so calm and centred in my life. Just the experience of being healed by Anna calms the mind and makes you feel at one with the universe."

/  Patricia D  /

I remember being introduced to meditation at primary school with these instructions: close your eyes and think of nothing. I just kept thinking “Am I doing it right?” and I decided I couldn’t meditate and couldn’t see the point. When I tried a course in meditation for stress reduction 18 years ago I still came to the same conclusion. I couldn’t stop my mind and meditating every day seemed more like a form of torture than something for well-being.

It took a crisis to send me on a five day silent retreat in 2011. “This way I will have to learn as there won’t be anything else to do.” Every day, sitting, walking, sitting, walking, sitting, walking and my mind screaming with it — how boring the breath was. I wanted to hit the teacher and tell him to ring the bloody bell when I was sure that the 30 minutes must be over. Occasional moments of beauty, peace and stillness, but mostly I learnt how busy my mind was and how it likes to narrate and judge everything, EVERYTHING! It was a pain in the ****!

And how fortunate I was to have some time with a teacher who helped me to be curious about my thinking — “HOW INTERESTING!” — she would cry and I would think, that is rather interesting. And I started to be curious about my thoughts rather than judging them and trying to get rid of them. And then I started to find them rather funny and I would find myself smiling whilst meditating at the ridiculousness of these thoughts. I was learning a different relationship to thoughts and just how freeing that could be!

"If it weren’t for my mind, my meditation would be excellent."

— Pema Chodron

Experience

Since that first retreat, I committed to a daily practice (which wasn't quite so daily at weekends!). Going on retreat became my new holiday and I have had some wonderful times including a month at Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village and a month teaching English at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal. I have practised a wide array of meditations including metta (loving kindness), samatha (calm abiding), emptiness and the jhanas (deeper states of meditation). I opened a meditation group at my office then trained to teach mindfulness with the Mindfulness Institute in 2013 and trained to teach teenagers with the Mindfulness in Schools Project in 2014. I have run numerous courses and introduction to mindfulness workshops, facilitated day long mindfulness retreats and led hundreds of meditation sessions. I have loved it and a lot of other people have too!

If you're interested in learning meditation and mindfulness one to one or for a group or if you would like to introduce it to your workplace or school let's have a chat. 

"I would like to thank you for opening my eyes to finding the balance allowing me to be kinder to myself as well as your many words of wisdom."

/  Kim A  /

MORE TESTIMONIALS

My Background

I was lucky enough to be professionally trained as a coach with my old employer John Lewis. And then lucky enough to get to coach people! It really is wonderful to coach someone, go on a journey through the ups and downs towards their goal and see them grow in so many different ways. To see their beliefs about who they are and what they can do change. It is so inspiring!

My coaching style is calm, curious, compassionate and non-judgemental with a dash of humour. I want to find out who you are and who you could be! What is most important to me is that you feel in a safe place to take a good honest look at where you are and where you want to be, and at who you are and who you want to be.

Training

65 Accredited Coach-Specific Training Hours (ACSTH) which are taken from the Accredited Coach Training Programme (ACTP) run by Coaching Development Ltd.

Numerous (and ongoing) CPD programs on a variety of subjects including beliefs and values, psychic distance, representations, symbols and objects, serious play, clean language, somatics, neurodiversity.

"Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you will be traveling the road of who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey."

/  Ambrose Redmoon  /

About Coaching

Coaching is all about the relationship, you can have the most excellent experienced coach but if the relationship doesn’t work it’s the wrong coach for you. So how do you know if the relationship is right? For me these are the most important things

1. Trust and honesty. You need to feel over the first few sessions that you can be honest with your coach about how you are and who you are and what you think. The sort of things that can make you feel vulnerable or emotional. So you need to trust that your coach isn’t going to judge you and is going to continue to respect you and believe in you. You also need to be able to say what is working for you and what isn’t. So that the coaching relationship evolves too and becomes more effective for you.

2. Listening. A good coach spends the vast majority of their time listening, reflecting and questioning in order to understand. They don’t bring themselves into it and they don’t judge what you say or who you are.

3. Clarity. A good coaching relationship will mean that you feel more clear about where you are now, where you want to get to and how you are going to get there. An excellent coaching relationship will also along the journey bring clarity about the meaning of your goal and what your values and beliefs are and unlock new beliefs about who you are and who you could be.

4. Hindrances. We all have things that hold us back, and setbacks or non-progress in a good coaching relationship are looked at as opportunities to learn about you as a person. How you work, what your strengths and weaknesses are and what you need to help you progress. It should feel like a safe and fun place to experiment, to go down blind alleys, to get stuck, to feel confused, to fail and to learn and know that all of this is moving you forwards.

5. Perspectives and self-awareness. A great coach will support and challenge you, get you thinking and not judge any of your answers. You will find over the journey that you start to look at things in different ways to be curious yourself about how you are thinking, what assumptions you are making and what is really most important to you.

6. Beliefs: A great coaching relationship will inevitably shift your beliefs about yourself, others and the world in a positive way. You will begin to believe in your own creativity and resourcefulness and the effects will filter into areas of your life that you hadn’t expected.

So if you would like to find out a bit more and see if we are a good match let's have a "chemistry meeting". It will take about 30 minutes and the only thing you need to commit is your time.

"Anna had a fun, supportive and relaxed style which made me feel instantly safe and secure in exploring what I could do to improve and develop myself which was extremely empowering. I discovered lots about myself and challenged my old ways of thinking. It was amazing how quickly I started to see results through simple changes. The great thing was I felt it not only added value to my time in work but also my personal life too. I cannot recommend Anna and coaching in general enough!"

/  Vicki S  /