ABOUT
I N T I M A T E B E I N G
Olivia Crooks
Embodiment Mentor
''Embodiment is a relearning of how to inhabit your body, awaken intimacy with the subtle, and be guided from within. I teach the practices for this because I’ve seen how meeting oneself from within can open the door to willingness, resilience, and a deeper trust in life itself."
More about Olivia...
There’s a moment, often quiet, when the body whispers a truth the mind doesn’t yet understand. For me, that first happened when I was 14. A quiet, cellular knowing that I was here to guide others through their bodies… even as my own felt like a hard place to be. The physical discomfort I often felt as a young person awoke an inquiry. And that inquiry became a path. I found yoga at 16 and fell in love. At 21, I completed a year-long training in Sydney, immersed in anatomy, the sutras, ayurveda, asana, pranayama, and subtle energy maps. I taught my first retreat at 22. But even then, something deeper was calling, something beneath the methods I was being shown. That deeper current led me to India in 2003, where I encountered non-duality for the first time through the voices of Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramesh Balsekar. Soon after, I found myself in a workshop in the UK with Godfrey Devereux. That moment changed everything. For the first time, I was guided into my body not as a system to master, but as a place to meet, to feel, to live from. I apprenticed with him for ten years, assisting, teaching, traveling, and absorbing a way of guiding that spoke from the body and not the mind. Alongside this, I was moving through my own initiations, unravelling my conditioning around sexuality, spiritual expression, and what it means to deeply feel. Through what some might call a tantric lens, I explored the body as a gateway to knowing and expressing my truth more readily. For many years, I taught retreats and immersions across Europe, spaces where people could return to themselves through the body. These days, my work continues to evolve. Women’s spaces, embodiment courses, and offerings that uncover the sacred in every moment, in every day. I offer what I’ve come to know through lived experience, shared with honesty, clarity, and invitations that are felt in the body, not just understood by the mind. And while my work is responsive and alive, there is a method. One grounded in practice and a deep trust in the intelligence of the body. What I offer isn’t just a teaching. It’s a remembering. A return to rhythm. A return to your own body’s wisdom. A return to your place in the wild, mysterious beauty of being alive.
Where it began
My approach to posture practice stems from the lineage of Krishnamacharya, often seen as the godfather of modern yoga. His influence spread through key students: his son Desikachar and Mohan (Viniyoga), Pattabhi Jois and BNS Iyengar (Ashtanga Vinyasa), and BKS Iyengar (Iyengar Yoga). I studied briefly with Mohan, and my teacher, Godfrey Devereux, studied a little with both BNS Iyengar and BKS Iyengar. In the early days of yoga’s spread through the West, the emphasis often leaned toward physical achievement, strength, flexibility, and discipline. But for many, this approach didn’t meet the deeper needs of modern life. Injuries were (and often still are) common. The esoteric promises of yoga: clarity, freedom, inner peace, remained out of reach. For me, this realisation opened the way to a more honest inquiry. A turning away from performance, and inward toward self-inquiry and direct experience, shaped by meditation, non-duality, and the lived gifts of practice. Within this, my understanding deepened. Not through doctrine, but through embodiment. Through feeling. Through remembering what the body has always known. The Yamas and Niyamas, drawn from the Yoga Sutras, lie at the heart of how I guide others. They are not given as moral rules to obey, but rather as lenses, natural unfoldings that arise when you become deeply intimate with your own nature. The Yamas (Expressions of our essential nature) Ahimsa – Sensitivity → The spontaneous sensitivity that arises when you are at ease in yourself. Satya – Honesty → The natural honesty that flows when there is no fear or tension distorting perception or communication. Asteya – Openness → The spaciousness that emerges when you no longer feel separate or insufficient. Brahmacharya – Intimacy → The effortless conservation of energy that happens when you are not chasing or resisting life. Aparigraha – Generosity → The freedom to let life flow without clinging, when you trust what you are. The Niyamas (The fruits of the Yamas in experience) Sauca – Integrity → The natural authenticity of being when nothing interferes with body, breath, or mind. Santosha – Trust → The spontaneous satisfaction that arises when struggle ends and presence deepens. Tapas – Passion → The natural enthusiasm to engage fully with life when fear no longer dominates. Svadhyaya – Self-inquiry → The innocent curiosity about who and what you are, arising when you are no longer defensive towards life. Ishvarapranidhana – Total Immersion → The effortless trust in life's intelligence when the need to control dissolves. All my offerings are shared through a methodology of embodiment grounded in non-duality, guiding you to unravel the inherited layers of shame, blame, guilt, and the drive for self-improvement that often cloud your natural state. All is an invitation to remember: you are already whole. Already enough. This work turns away from the constant striving of self-fixing and toward a life anchored in self-inquiry, intimacy, and trust. My approach has evolved through decades of practice lived in my own body. What I offer isn’t theoretical, it’s drawn from the quiet, powerful knowing that nothing needs to be fixed in order to be free. From here, I offer practices for those called to enter the ocean of embodiment, a return to quiet confidence, knowing, and belonging. Qualities that naturally emerge when striving dissolves and life is lived from the wholeness that has always quietly been within.
