This began long before Conscious Flow had a name.
It began years ago, in a yoga class I almost didn’t belong in. I was 18, a student of Diplomacy in Hanoi, surrounded by people decades older than me. The class was organized in a formal setting, quiet, traditional, almost clinical. Most participants were seniors or people managing serious health conditions. I didn’t know why I had signed up but I only knew that something inside me was restless at that time.
And then, something unexpected happened. As the class unfolded, I felt a calm I didn’t have language for yet. My breath softened. My mind slowed. My body felt… inhabited. I left the room changed, even though I couldn’t explain how.
At the time, I didn’t know this moment would follow me across continents and decades.
Nearly ten years later, in 2007, I was in the United States pursuing a master’s degree in International Service at American University. Life was busy, ambitious, and intellectually demanding. I felt excited but also stressed constantly and one evening, a friend invited me to a yoga class. The moment I lay down in savasana, the feeling returned: the same breath, the same stillness, the same sense of coming home to myself.
Different country, different language, different life but same nervous system, same human need. That was when something quietly shifted. I wanted to help people feel this too.
What followed was a long, imperfect journey into yoga education.
Like many practitioners who feel the call to teach, I stepped into the formal pathway: 200-hour, 300-hour teacher trainings, accredited through Yoga Alliance. I was determined to learn “properly,” to meet global standards. What I didn’t anticipate was how hard the system would be for people with real lives.
Most trainings required four to six weeks away from work, often during summers or holidays, precisely when professional responsibilities peak. Beyond tuition, there were flights, accommodation, food, insurance. A single 200-hour training cost me nearly $5,000 USD, not including travel.
To attend, I almost had to give up the very job that allowed me to afford the training in the first place. That training was a very nice experience for me in a sense that eventually, I managed to keep my day-to-day job when I came back to reality.
Later, I chose another training in the U.S. This time at a stage in my life when I could take five weeks off, travel comfortably, and absorb the experience fully. It was rich and meaningful, more than a holiday could ask for. And yet, even then, felt something familiar and unsettling.I felt left behind, not because I did not have help, not because I did not commit to the training, but because standardized classrooms do not serve everyone equally.
I excelled in chanting and sequencing. I struggled with philosophy. I hesitated to ask questions, afraid they might sound “stupid” or slow the group down. Research later confirmed what I felt intuitively: standardized education fails a significant portion of learners, not only in embodied, philosophical disciplines but also in physical training because we are all different and have unique needs.
I eventually deepened my philosophical studies through both academic routes and immersive learning in India. But I kept wondering:
What if no one should be left behind in education and training?
I tried online trainings too because online trainings are convenient, affordable and flexible. I can be at the comfort of my home and still have live training with my favorite teachers who are living continent away. Yet, I still fell something essential was missing…. Without mentorship, without meaningful check-ins, without a sense of being truly seen, learning felt flat. I could consume content, but I couldn’t feel uplifted. That quiet loneliness stayed with me.And when I later opened my own yoga studio, it shaped everything I did: from noticing the hesitation to ask questions from students, to feeling of being “not quite aligned” with the group pace.
The gap between knowledge delivered and wisdom integrated.
I became determined to close that gap for my students. And if only I have 40 hours in a day wearing many hats running a yoga studio, a yoga program, a yoga training.
Then something unexpected happened. I know I need to create a smart solution to assist me to bring my teaching at scale, without losing sights of my concerns. After many discussion rounds with Skape, Innovation and trusted friends and advisors, Innovation Norway said yes to funding Conscious Flow.
So did GG Young to collaborate with us.
So did advisors at Living Heritage.
What surprised me wasn’t the validation it was the recognition that the pain points of yoga students, teachers, and studios were being acknowledged not as personal shortcomings, but as systemic design failures.
Conscious Flow didn’t emerge from a business plan but from lived experience.
From years of moving between cultures, classrooms, studios, retreats, and inner landscapes always asking the same quiet question:
What if we didn’t have to choose between personalization and scale?
What if wellness education could adapt to humans, instead of humans adapting to rigid systems?
This is an invitation to explore that question.
And if, as you read, something in you feels recognized—
if you’ve ever felt unseen in a classroom, disconnected from your practice, or overwhelmed by trying to do it all alone—
you are already part of this story.
Conscious Flow is currently opening its early testing phase.
If you’re curious to experience what adaptive, reflective, human-centered wellness can feel like, we invite you to join us.
Not as a user.
But as a co-creator of what wellness can become.
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