Namasté! My name is Annalu and I am greatly passionate about girls and women. I cultivate my passion through my studies, my work and the practice of Yoga.
In the last ten years I have been travelling and cooperating with many people and associations to support women’s empowerment and gender equality in different parts of the world. Many diverse stories of girls, mothers, sisters and grandmothers have filled my heart with love, compassion, strength and courage.
The day I left my hometown, 14 years ago, I began a journey within myself and my femininity. I was 22 and I was in search of a place where I could get rid of the “pretty doll syndrome”, where I could blossom and live my femininity freely without fear of being judged. Where I could be the woman I wanted to be without gender-based obligations and limitations.
Travelling made me realize that many other women around the world shared my need. I discovered that my personal story was also the story of Sofie from Ouagadougou with whom I lived in Benin in 2007, the story of Clelia from Montevideo with whom I worked in 2012, the story of Sancha that I met in Colombia in 2016, the story of my mom, my grandmother, most of my girlfriends and many other women who crossed my path.
I started practicing Yoga in 2008. Hatha Yoga was the tool I decided to use to continue the self-exploration I had embarked on. I went travelling to India to practice with different teachers and I certified as Yoga instructor in 2015. A year later I studied pregnancy Yoga and Yoga for women’s health and well-being. I clearly needed and wanted to get deeper into my femininity: this wonderful, cyclical, colourful world that I hadn’t learn to appreciate when I was younger.
Today, following my dharma, “my right way of living”
I feel empowered, I feel grateful, I feel bliss.
With my work on gender-based violence and gender equality, thanks to the feminist theories and tools, and through the practice of Yoga, my journey of self-empowerment and self-discover, brought me here today, to Barcelona where I happily live with Nicolas, my wonderful husband.
I have the desire to share my experience and my approach to conscious womanhood with women and girls around the world. So I decided to write this blog. Mybeautifulcycle will bring together pieces of my personal story as a migrant woman, my on-going self-inquiry and my womb honouring practices with tales of other sisters from all around the world, the knowledge of Yoga and the theories of feminist researchers and the teachings of feminist yogini.
This is a blog about empowerment and gratitude for our cyclic life. My wholehearted motivation is to support girls and women to be truly themselves, love and respect their bodies and participate to their full potential in the world.
This blog is my personal contribution to women’s well-being in our crazy, modern, linear society. This is my service yoga.
Please consider that I am not a health practitioner and that the information contained in this blog represents my opinion and in no way it replaces a medical advice.