Breath, Body & ADHD

A note from our founder Stacey Parkes:  

For most of my life I have felt like I was living slightly out of rhythm with the world around me.

From the outside things often looked fine. I was driven, creative, energetic, full of ideas. But internally it was very different. My mind has always moved quickly, jumping from one thought to the next, pulling me in a hundred directions at once. I struggled with emotional regulation long before I had the language to understand what that meant. Some days everything felt amplified, intense and overwhelming. Other days there was a strange numbness that made it hard to connect with anything at all.

For years I simply thought this was my personality.

I watched other people move through life with what seemed like a steadiness I could never quite access. They remembered things. They stayed organised. They didn’t seem to constantly battle their own minds.

Meanwhile I felt like I was trying to hold everything together with sheer willpower.

There were things that helped. Over time I built what I now call my toolbelt. Yoga, movement, fitness, breathwork, long walks, writing. These practices gave my mind somewhere to go and my body somewhere to ground itself. They didn’t make the noise disappear completely, but they gave me a way to live with it.

For a long time those tools helped me stay afloat.

Then childbirth changed everything.

Becoming a mother is a profound experience, but it is also one that can shake the foundations of who you think you are. After the birth of Ray something shifted in me in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The emotional intensity of the experience, combined with exhaustion and the physical changes of pregnancy and birth, seemed to remove the structure that had been holding me together.

Suddenly I couldn’t access my toolbelt in the same way.

The practices that once grounded me felt far away. My body felt unfamiliar and disconnected. The mental noise became louder and more relentless. I found myself spiralling into overthinking that I couldn’t switch off.

At times it felt like my mind had completely turned against me.

Eventually I received a diagnosis of ADHD.

In some ways it explained so much. The forgetfulness, the constant search for stimulation, the dopamine craving, the emotional intensity, the anxiety that seems to appear from nowhere. All of the things I had quietly battled for years suddenly had a name.

But the diagnosis also brought another difficult truth to the surface.

One of the things I have struggled with most throughout my life is an intense sense of self criticism. It is uncomfortable to talk about openly, but there have been moments where that criticism turns into something darker.

Sometimes I have hated myself.

It is difficult to explain that feeling to people who have never experienced it. It is not logical and it is not constant, but when it appears it can be overwhelming. A voice that questions everything you do, everything you are, every decision you make.

After the birth of Ray that voice became louder than it had ever been before.

There were moments where the overthinking became so intense that I genuinely could not see a way out of it. My mind felt like a maze I had been trapped inside.

Like many people navigating ADHD, I tried medication in the hope that it would help create some stability.

Instead it had the opposite effect.

The medication dulled something essential inside me. The creativity that has always been such a huge part of who I am felt muted. The spark that drives my curiosity and energy began to fade. I remember sitting there and thinking very clearly that I would rather live with the chaos of my mind than lose that part of myself.

So I made the decision to step away from medication.

That decision has not been easy. Living unmedicated with ADHD means learning to navigate the intensity of your mind in a different way. It means finding strategies, routines and awareness that help you stay grounded when the waves begin to rise.

In many ways I am still learning how to do that.

Over the last two years I have thrown a huge amount of energy into building the business. In some ways it has been a form of survival. When my mind feels chaotic, having something meaningful to focus on can create a sense of structure.

But I also know that the deeper work lies elsewhere.

It lies in returning to my body.

Yoga has always been my crutch. The place where my mind finally begins to soften, where the constant mental chatter quiets enough for me to breathe again. For a long time after childbirth I struggled to access that space. My body felt unfamiliar and my energy was scattered.

But slowly something has begun to shift.

I feel ready to return to my practice, not in the way I once did it, but in a way that honours the person I am now. A slower return. A more compassionate relationship with my body and mind.

Yoga, for me, is not about perfection. It is about remembering that the body can be a place of refuge rather than conflict.

I do not have everything figured out. Balance is still something I am learning how to create. Some days feel steady and clear, others feel like I am still trying to catch my breath.

But perhaps that is part of the journey.

For now I will keep walking, one step at a time, learning how to live with this mind rather than fighting against it.

And somewhere along the way I hope to rediscover the quiet moments where breath, body and awareness come back into alignment again.