A Portrait of Rebellion

Hajnalka Cecilia was born in Johannesburg and lives in London, where she writes as Karmic Rebelle. Her work begins where the personal meets the systemic—trauma, belief, institutions and power—and asks what it actually takes to become free.

She is a survivor of complex trauma that began in childhood and continued into her adult life. She writes from inside that experience rather than around it, connecting private suffering—within families, relationships and the body—to the systems surrounding it: how trauma, misogyny, inequality, institutional power and spiritual belief determine whose pain is recognised, whose testimony is believed, and who is permitted to recover.

For years, Hajnalka taught yoga full-time, including children’s classes and drop-in sessions at studios and gyms. She founded Thula Yoga, creating women’s workshops, Tantra workshops and healing retreats that brought together yoga, writing and energetic healing. Yoga and spirituality remain central to her wellbeing, her relationship with God and her connection to herself, informing how she understands meaning and moral responsibility.

A profound mental-health breakdown, followed by further abuse, neglect and systemic failure, took much of that life away—her health, her business and, for a time, her ability to teach. Radha, the assistance dog Hajnalka trained herself, arrived in the aftermath. Together, they have been rebuilding ever since.

Hajnalka is now studying Sociology and Criminology with The Open University while turning what she knows about power and harm into essays rather than asana.

She has not stopped teaching. She has simply changed the room.

The Work

Karmic Rebelle—Disrupt Karma. Restore Dharma.—is where that teaching happens now: a place where the personal becomes political, the spiritual meets the material and lived experience becomes a way of asking larger questions.

It is not about certainty. It is about inquiry: questioning what we have been taught, tracing private pain back to its wider conditions and examining the beliefs and institutions that shape who we become.

Her work explores complex and betrayal trauma; coercive and intimate-partner abuse; neurodivergence; recovery and the reconstruction of identity; yoga philosophy and spiritual practice; structural misogyny and inequality; institutional failure, state-produced harm and human rights.

Understanding ourselves requires understanding the world around us.

You can reach Hajnalka via Karmic Rebelle on Facebook.