I have been a student and teacher at Achieve for almost 10 years. In this time I have competed and performed but I just love learning and teaching tricks more than anything. Before that I was into aerial hoop and silks, and before that I’ve been doing yoga since I was 16.
Instructor – Elle
Elle
About Instructor
What inspired you to become a pole instructor?
I have been fascinated by the way the body moves my whole life so I am a nerd for the mechanics of pole. I had already been a yoga teacher for about 7 years at that point and when I fell in love with pole I fell in love with myself. It was the action of doing these incredible tricks that made me overcome self doubts. I just felt that was magical and I wanted everyone to experience it, to do what once seemed impossible. And sharing it has taught me so much more about myself.
Something that no-one would ever know about you? Or a fun fact.
I have lived on a boat! I spent 2 years on a live aboard surf charter in Sumatra, Indonesia. It was actually not long after that when I was I Bali that someone said, “I’ve heard girls get really fit doing pole”.
What do you do outside the pole studio – work or personal.
I am a practice manager for a legal team and absolutely love that I get to use skills I’ve learned as a pole teacher in a leadership role. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that gives me the same feeling – when someone in my team does well and I get to see them recognise their own achievement my heart is full. I also make live edge furniture.
Most inspiring person you have met and what inspires you about them?
Elizabeth Gilbert. I read Eat Pray Love at a time when I was breaking off an engagement, running off to an ashram and shaving my head. I always lived life on my own terms but back then I was seen as wild! Everyone called me a free spirit but they also kept telling me to settle down, get married, become a lawyer, blah blah blah. And then her book got famous and it felt like something shifted. It was a really important moment in our culture when the world recognised that women actually have a need and a basic human right to do life differently! I met her at talk she gave in Sydney that my big sister took me to. I think that was important because my sister had started to admire certain choices I made. She no longer saw me as rebellious or immature, but rather as inspiring for being the one in the family that did it differently. Elizabeth Gilbert was also the last stranger I hugged before the pandemic, so that makes it more memorable.
What is your favorite quote?
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
If you were a super-hero, what powers would you have?
Teleportation to avoid commuting, control the weather so I could reverse climate change, mind control to turn hate into love and anger into kindness to protect animals and regenerative healing so I don’t have to spend so much on skincare.
What is it that you love about Achieve
After almost a decade I can definitely say that the best memories are not on stage or getting a hard trick, but just hanging upside down with my Achieve Family! I feel at home when I walk in the studio, it’s given me friends for life who have been there throughout some pretty big moments in my life, and been integral in becoming the woman I am today. It’s more than just a place where I feel safe to be my weird little self, it’s a place I go to celebrate me for being unapologetically me.