I'd dabbled with fitness before India. Lost some weight. Got into it. But it was always on-and-off — I'd get somewhere, then drift back. The environment always won. My brother Dave — most charismatic person I'd ever met — was quietly pulling me in the wrong direction without either of us realising it.
At 20 I bought a one-way ticket to India. Not as a plan. More as an escape.
In India I found a community and a yoga and fitness teacher named Arjun who barely spoke English but somehow said everything I needed to hear. After three or four months in that environment, surrounded by those people, something shifted that hadn't shifted in years of trying alone.
It stopped being something I was doing and became part of who I was. Not because I tried harder. Because for the first time, the environment was pulling me toward the right version of myself.

