Stopfordians wanting to make a major life-shift should ‘just go for it’ — according to a Hazel Grove woman who completely changed career and travelled to three continents, all before she turned 30.
Alison Carter, now 31, originally trained and worked as a journalist after securing a degree, but now works as a yoga teacher.
Along the way, Alison has travelled the world, and also had to come to terms with the ‘sudden’ loss of her father.
“I have always been developing and growing,” Alison, who runs yoga and pilates sessions in Stockport and Poynton, tells the Manchester Evening News. “It was not really a black and white process, it was a gradual series of events and choices.”
After graduating with a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of Salford in 2012, Alison edited various trade publications and freelanced for lifestyle magazines.
From there, she started to do some work in copywriting and marketing, before deciding to change tack completely at the end of 2018.
While Alison says that getting to that point was ‘gradual’, she does identify one event as a ‘tipping point’ on her journey — the death of her father.
“I lost my dad in 2016 and that was obviously a big loss and very sudden. It was pretty traumatic,” she adds.
“He was quite young at 60 and I was 26. That has made a big dent in my life. From that place I started my yoga practice. That was the tipping point.
“Something difficult happened and that is what I chose to do about it.”
Yoga was a big aid to Alison in that period after her loss — saying it ‘really helped me in lots of different ways’.
One of those was giving her the confidence to radically change her life.
“From that place, for a couple of years I went traveling,” Alison says.
“I quit my job and went off for a year to three different continents. It just changed my perspective.
“While I was traveling I decided to train as a yoga teacher, [so] in January 2020 I went to an island in Thailand and I did a 30 day intensive yoga and pilates teacher training course. “From there I set up my own business and came back to the UK.”
Now, through her business Returning To You Yoga , Alison offers individual and group yoga and pilates sessions both in-person and online.
She also works with local children, too, doing play based yoga. and also squeezes in a part-time accountancy job as well.
On top of her hectic schedule, she is preparing for her next big move — moving to Japan next year to teach in public schools.
On the move, she says: “I see it as a growth of my skills and working with people in a beneficial way in that community I am in — whether that’s Manchester or north Japan.”
Her catalogue of life experiences explains why Alison is a big advocate for diving into something new.
“The main thing I have learned is that everybody has a choice and that chance to make a change,” she summarises.
“We are in the driving seat of our own life. If you never do anything there’s literally no reason why not.
“Just go for it.
“It is not easy to make a change and everything is quite uncertain at the moment but I think the rewards are bigger and to feel like I am doing something in my life that’s true to who I am and I can help people is really valuable.”
