Help Skye’s dream to be a Budokon Teacher

Budokon means "The way of the Warrior Spirit". It is a mixed movement art practice, inspired by Martial Arts, Yoga, Calisthenics, Mobility, and Animal Locomotion.

See 500 hour course details: http://budokon.com/tt-description-bdk-500hr

SKYE'S STORY & MOVEMENT BACKGROUND

Skye’s heart, soul, and life’s purpose are movement and longevity. Born and raised in South Africa she has always been deeply connected emotionally and physically to moving her body. She first felt this connection during her years as a dancer from nursery through to high school. She was a talented and skilled dancer in Modern, Tap, Contemporary, Freestyle, and Hip Hop. There was more to dancing than performing on stage that made her feel good, and that was the effect it had on her confidence, self-expression, mental and emotional health. Without fail, dancing and movement have always helped Skye to find happiness, joy, accomplishment, health, and a strong mind-body connection. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints, she had to give up dancing and focus more on studies during school and college. In hinds’ sight, she wished she had been a little more assertive in communicating her desires to pursue a career in it – but that’s what she’d done now at the age of 26.

After studying for a BA Degree in the Business of Fashion, Skye went on to work as a Health and Fitness writer at Longevity Magazine because their sister fashion magazine, Elle, didn’t have an open position. A sign from the universe, because it was here, she felt her passion for Longevity, Health, and Movement. That’s when she decided to leave her desk job. At the time she was only 21 and had already moved out of her mother’s house and was residing with her boyfriend, Craig. He was nothing but supportive in following her dreams and despite the risks involved he pushed her to get out there and learn.

She began pursuing her dream to teach movement and help others achieve abilities above and beyond. Her only mission was to get as much experience as she could in the industry and therefore was open to taking what she could get. Often this meant working very early or late shifts and driving long distances or waking up at 3 am in the morning. Skye began self-studying Pilates and Yoga. Even though she has didn’t have a dance or fitness qualification – she had a lot of knowledge and confidence in herself to approach gyms where she would do whatever it took to learn. However, she did have to earn money along the way to cover her bills, which meant continuing with freelance journalism and marketing along with working part-time for whatever fitness company she worked for at the time. These included Body20, the Randburg Boxing Club, John Meyer’s Personal Training Gym, BODYTEC, and volunteering to coach community Bootcamps. She was so dedicated to her mission that she would accept lower-paying jobs over high-paying jobs that she truly deserved in the fashion world because she was so passionate. It was now or never at this point in time and come hell or high water, she wasn’t going to listen to anybody!

In addition, she participated in Striking Mixed Martial Arts and started to really LOVE the integration of Mixed Movement Modalities and began aligning different practices through her teaching.

In 2018 she began documenting her passion for health, longevity, fitness, and also fashion on Instagram. She called it Skyezee FashionFit, which started growing a small following. She and her boyfriend spent countless hours and late nights trying to put together a website, business cards, flyers, posters, marketing material you name it. She then began building her own mobile training business and establishing a small client base as a Herbalife Wellness Coach. (Although she enjoyed her experience doing this, she decided Herbalife wasn’t for her!) Skye also started a Blog and later registered Skyezee FashionFit pty LTD as a company. These 2.5 years were spent working hard and getting a lot of experience in a short amount of time, with little money and pure determination. During her time working as a Pilates Teacher/Personal Trainer, Boxercise, and Boxing Conditioning Coach she took a shine to jumping rope. Mainly because she couldn’t skip saving her life, but this motivated her to learn it. After practicing the skill every day, she started to love the tricks you can do with it and eventually decided to teach it as a skill to others. She also saw amazing results from it in terms of physical fitness and wanted to share it through a program. Skye learned that skipping paired with boxing high-intensity intervals using resistance training provided short, effective, and fun workouts.

Therefore, she did a ton of research on it and wrote her own E-book. After which she then filmed and edited her first follow-along video format program called, Jump Fit. This program was sold with a Jump Fit Kit which included lightweight, medium weight, heavyweight ropes, an exercise mat, a resistance band, and a small carry bag.

Soon after this, she had an opportunity to live and work at a huge resort in Watamu, Kenya (total paradise) where she would work as a Movement Coach and Adventure Guide. She jumped at the opportunity because it fitted her dream lifestyle, career and would open up the doors to her hosting movement retreats there. Obviously, this was scary, since she would be leaving friends and family and her career opportunities in Johannesburg, plus her boyfriend would need to quit his 10-year job. However, she knew it was worth a shot – and it was worth every penny or loan spent because she gained so much experience, knowledge, confidence and reassured her passion and life’s work. Not only did she get to meet and coach international clients, but she also learned about the Kenyan coast, the mangroves, how to stand-up paddleboard, coach water aerobics, teach group Yogalates classes, lead groups of people, and guide adventure excursions. The scenery was stunning, so she was able to film more Jump Fit content with amazing paradise backdrops.

Skye tried her best to make it work and continued selling her Jump Fit programs online, shooting content, and writing for Longevity part-time online. Then six months later, sadly the hotel let her down and gave her devastating news that they had overinvested and could no longer use her services. Despite signed contractual agreements, an unexpected event like this can happen. As heartbreaking as it was, Skye couldn’t find enough work in Watamu to support their daily lives there. She was also under immense stress financially and mentally due to an eating disorder and a serious eye operation that had to be done in Nairobi for a degenerative eye condition called Keratoconus. Therefore, Skye and Craig had to return home to Johannesburg.

This was the first time Skye experienced true failure, she felt helpless, lost, and truly scared for not only her future but her boyfriend too. When returning to Johannesburg, Skye was not in a good place mentally and was struggling a lot with her weight and her relationship with food. However, she knew she had to pick up the pieces quickly if they were going to survive and continue living well. Despite her struggles, she then started advertising small movement classes in her area again and even attempted to take up a more corporate job in an effort to get a stable income, but still couldn’t do it because the environment just didn’t feel right. She then decided to continue with her business and worked part-time at a BODYTEC studio as an EMS (electrical muscle stimulation) Personal Trainer.

Whilst working at BODYTEC, the owner was looking to sell her other studio. That’s when Skye and Craig decided that they could be the ones to take it over. Skye jumped at the opportunity because she felt that it was the next best choice for them to still be in the fitness/lifestyle business and work on their own businesses plus earn an income. The corporate life just wasn’t going to satisfy Skye’s true passion for living life through movement, health, and longevity. FYI, taking on the franchise was also not something they didn’t know anything about, because when Skye worked for Body20 (BODYTEC competitor) 1.5 years before, they were interested in going into the franchise and had done all their research already. They didn’t do it at the time because the Kenya opportunity came up first.

Skye and Craig attended the BODYTEC franchise training in Cape Town about a couple of months straight after their return from Kenya, so it was stressful and fast. There wasn’t a lot of time to digest what had happened and Skye often found herself feeling exceptionally overwhelmed and confused. One minute she was living her dream in Kenya and the next she was set off on a business franchise training. However, despite her feelings, she held on and began writing for Longevity online again to bring in some extra money during the training and during her time managing BODYTEC. Skye and Craig were certified as EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation) Personal Trainers and were made the official studio owners of BODYTEC Rivonia.

However, it didn’t exactly turn out the way they expected and although the decision was supportive of their goals and paying their bills – they couldn’t have invested at a worse time. In the first half of their time at BODYTEC, Skye had to admit herself into Akeso Crescent Clinic due to feeling extreme distress around her body image, weight, and food. She was diagnosed with an eating disorder, Anorexia, and Mild Depression. However, Skye knew that if she didn’t start working on her mental health and stress levels, as well as her physical health she wouldn’t ever be the inspiring women entrepreneur and talented mixed movement teacher she aspired to be. Then in the second half, exactly one week directly after Skye came out of Akeso Crescent Clinic, South Africa was sent into lockdown due to Covid-19 in the year 2020. This was an incredibly scary and traumatic year as both Skye and Craig had to close the doors to their new business (BODYTEC), once again placing immense financial pressure and stress on them. They also experienced a tragic passing of a family relative and endured a lot of hardship that year.

Skye began to push past her struggles and began reconnecting with her dreams to teach movement. She had been taking classes at an MMA gym over the years where she completed striking, kickboxing, and some jiujitsu. She really took a liking to Martial Arts because it made her feel strong, fierce, and powerful, like a warrior. This is where she noticed there was a strong connection between different movement modalities and was passionate about connecting them in her coaching style. She then discovered Cameron Shayne and BUDOKON on Instagram and later found Dave Gardner – a BUDOKON practitioner, teacher, and movement artist. BUDOKON was exactly what she had been trying to piece together herself. Dave helped her in starting her BUDOKON and Mixed Movement journey through his workshops.

Skye has an extremely open-minded, authentic, dynamic, challenging, creative, and fun approach to movement. She strongly believes in exploring variation in whatever activities you do because you will improve self-confidence, the mind-body connection, coordination, spatial awareness, endurance, sports performance, and mental resilience.

In 2018 she discovered Cameron Shayne’s Budokon and fell in love with the art form. Since then, she’s been dedicated to her training as both a Budokon Teacher and Athlete focusing on Budokon Yoga, Calisthenics, Mobility, and Conditioning to help any athlete or fitness enthusiast become the ultimate mover through multidimensional movement and meditation. The entire time she didn’t give up on the dream to become this Movement Artist. She managed to finally get to a point at the beginning of this year (2021) where she was able to finally begin learning BUDOKON Yoga online (50 Hour TT). Skye has already started teaching it at Gracie Barre Illovo to Jiujitsu practitioners and to a few other clients. She’s also currently attending Jiujitsu classes held at Gracie Barra Illovo and is a Calisthenics/Gymnast enthusiast. She mostly trains with this approach in both her personal and professional backgrounds. She may have left some things out – but essentially, Skye lives, breathes, and embodies movement.

“Everybody has a goal and a dream and I want to show you that it IS possible to achieve whatever you set your mind to.” – Skye.

SKYE'S FINANCIAL SITUATION

Skye would very much like to join Cameron’s TT Camp because she would like to further her career and future in the Mixed Movement Arts world. However, due to socioeconomic and geographic location factors (She lives in South Africa) and COVID-19, she cannot afford to pay the full tuition.

She is looking to raise $10,000 to cover the costs involved in obtaining the Teacher Training Qualification.