Ana Nycole Gomes spent her teenage years training to be a nun – until one offhand comment completely changed the trajectory of her life.
The 24-year-old gave up a life in the convent to teach yoga on the beach in just a bikini, after a chance encounter with a stranger ‘changed something inside her’.
She tells Daily Mail she was 16 when a man at a church-organised youth retreat told her she was ‘too beautiful to be a nun’, which became a turning point in her life.
The man, who she met in Alagoas, Brazil, was a stranger to her and had made the comment as a joke, but Nycole says it hit her deeply.
As a young girl already questioning her life as a training nun, Nycole recalls the moment felt like ‘permission’ to question everything she had been taught.
Nycole never met that man again, but says she will never forget the words he said to her.
Ana Nycole Gomes, 24, spent her teenage years training to be a nun – until one offhand comment completely changed the trajectory of her life. (pictured)
Nycole gave up a life in the convent to teach yoga on the beach in just a bikini, after a chance encounter with a stranger ‘changed something inside her’
‘It was like someone turned a light on inside me. I started to wonder if I was ready to give up the world before I’d even lived in it,’ she says.
Nycole reveals she grew up believing she was destined for a life of isolation and obedience, but now spends her days finding discipline in yoga.
‘I grew up believing I was born to live in seclusion,’ says Nycole, who is currently based in Maceió, Brazil.
‘My family raised me for that. But when someone told me I was “too beautiful to be a nun”, something changed inside me.’
Nycole goes on to say that offhand comment sparked a rebellion that changed the course of her life forever.
‘I started to wonder if I was ready to give up my youth, my desires, my freedom,’ she recalls.
‘I grew up between loss and the need to reinvent myself.’
Nycole, who was born in Arapiraca in the northeast of Brazil, reveals she was placed in child protective services after she was abandoned at the age of five.
She tells Daily Mail she was 16 when a man at a church-organised youth retreat told her she was ‘too beautiful to be a nun’, which became a turning point in her life
‘It was like someone turned a light on inside me. I started to wonder if I was ready to give up the world before I’d even lived in it,’ she says
Her biological father lost the custody battle and she was eventually adopted by a religious family, but she ran away at the age of 17 to find him again.
She soon began to rebuild her life and earned money as a babysitter, but was unable to shake all of her religious teachings.
‘The discipline I learned in the convent became the same discipline I found in yoga. Only this time, it wasn’t about guilt—it was about connection,’ she says.
Nowadays, Nycole says she finds comfort in the discipline she learned in the convent, while also embracing her body and sensuality.
While she once dreamed of wearing a nun’s habit, she now proudly shares videos of herself doing yoga in a bikini, teaching her fans about spirituality and sensuality.
‘I was taught that sensuality was a sin. Now I see it as sacred. My body isn’t a burden—it’s how I speak my truth,’ she says.
‘The nun I never became taught me how to be the woman I am. Leaving that path was my first step toward freedom.’
