The chair that saved my health — and changed my life.,,🧘♀️
The Shakti Meditation Chair wasn't born from a clever business idea or a gap in the market. It was born from one of the hardest seasons of my life — and a moment in a car park when my daughter cried and begged me to go back inside.
Let me take you back.
In the years leading up to 2014, I was going through a divorce, selling our family home, and trying to hold my business together — all at the same time. What had been a home-based business now needed a warehouse, and with that came a whole new set of overheads I wasn't sure I could meet. So I did what I always do when I'm scared. I worked harder. Seven days a week, no breaks, no rest, no stopping.
40ft container arriving for my home based business in Moonee Ponds Victoria
After Divorce we sold our home and I moved my business to a warehouse in Tullamarine.
Looking back now, I was completely burnt out. But at the time, I just kept pushing for fear of failure 😒
Then the headaches started. Months of them. I finally went to the doctor in 2014 and had some tests done. I was told I'd had mini strokes. I was terrified as I had 3 children, and 2 still living at home with me. I was referred to a neurologist, who thankfully told me the mini strokes weren't confirmed — but what he found was still serious. There was a significant amount of white matter on my brain for my age. His belief was that chronic stress was causing the vessels in my brain to leak fluid and calcify. And if it continued, my health would get much worse.
He said something that really stuck with me. He told me "If you are doing yoga but your mind never stops, there was no point". I needed to actually find a way to stop my busy brain.
My daughter and a close friend took matters into their own hands. They found Vipassana — a ten-day silent meditation retreat — and put my name on the waitlist. There were no vacancies at the time. I was quite far down the list.
Then, the day before a container was due to arrive at my warehouse, they called. There had been a cancellations. I was in😲.
I nearly didn't go. I had a container arriving, stock to unload, my daughter left to manage everything alone. I felt guilty before I even walked through the door. On the first evening I told the instructor I needed to leave — that this wasn't the right time. She said, "This is just your resistance. Sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning."
I still wanted to leave. So when everyone filed into the meditation hall, I quietly packed my things, walked to my car, and called my daughter from the car park to tell her I was coming home.
She started crying. "Go back," she said. "Please go back. I've got this. But I cannot fix you."
I sat in that car park and made her a promise. I would go back. If I was going to leave her alone to run things, I was going to do this course to the absolute best of my ability.
I walked back into the meditation hall. I never missed another session!
Slowly — slowly — I felt every piece of stress begin to unravel from my body. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. There were moments of real pain, emotional and physical. But by the end of those ten days, my headaches were completely gone. My body felt soft in a way it hadn't in years — not tight, not rigid, not braced for the next thing. Just... soft.
When the silence finally lifted on day ten and we were allowed to speak again, I found I didn't want to talk to anyone. I walked out to the middle of a field and lay down in the grass. I just needed to be still with what had happened. I had really embraced the silence this 10 days had changed me forever.
I went home and began meditating twice a day, an hour each time. Life made that hard to sustain, so I shifted to twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening. I still try to do this every day.
Some time later, a meditation teacher asked if we could design a meditation chair for her in Bali. This excited me as I loved meditation. That first version was simple, and sold well through the warehouse — often before they even made it online.
But I knew I wanted to go further. I wanted to create something that held real intention. I added chakra crystals. I refined the design over several years to be more supportive. I poured everything I had learned about stillness, about healing, about the sacred space that meditation creates — into a chair.
7 Hand carved lotus flowers each holding a crystal aligned to that chakra
And that's how the Shakti Meditation Chair was born💫✨
Above are the 7 crystals we chose to align with each Chakra and also the benefits of each crystal.
This chair is my daily ritual. My quiet corner. The place I go to calm my monkey mind and come back to myself. When the headaches start creeping back in, I know what to do now. I sit down, I breathe, and I come home.
I made this chair for me. But I hope the Shakti Meditation Chair becomes yours too.
Watch The Shakti Story on YouTube below:
