Moments of disbelief

My class laughed when I said I was going to miss them while I'm away for a few weeks. They often laugh incredulously at the things I say. They don't believe that I will actually miss them, just as they don't believe that teaching times are my favourite times of the working week, that I... Continue Reading →

September 16, 2018 2

80 years

Numbers again. This time celebrating a birthday -- my mum's 80th. Not that she's counting. She says this feels ridiculous, that she simply can't believe she's 80. And she doesn't look it, I tell her, and I mean it. We zipped down recently to spend a weekend with her and my dad. Time always flies... Continue Reading →

September 14, 2018 3

Back to earth

"I'd like to hold your heart; is that OK with you?" My new life-in-yoga constantly suprises me and this was certainly a question I'd not been asked before. It kind of freaked me out and I said so. "It's OK, take your time; you can tell me when you're ready". So no escaping the heart-holding... Continue Reading →

September 11, 2018 2

Had we but world enough and time

Had we but world enough and time ..... But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; (Andrew Marvell) One of my teachers asked me last week how my own teaching was going. "Really well" burst from my lips before my usual reticence caught up to the conversation. "As far as I... Continue Reading →

September 6, 2018 6

Thoughts and blessings

What does it mean to hold someone in your thoughts? I wrote a condolence card to a friend recently, a Christian friend, and I offered some words like this. I couldn't say I was praying for her in her distress and grief since that's not part of my practice but I am holding her in... Continue Reading →

September 4, 2018 4

Posing for the camera

Hot on the heels of the afternoon with my artist friend I got an email from my photographer friend. I'd also spent an afternoon of yoga with her a couple of months back. She's not a yogi, but she'd asked if she could photograph me practising at home. I agreed. With a certain sense of fear... Continue Reading →

September 2, 2018 2

Quality not quantity

Numbers are one of my least favourite things. If you can have a phobia of numbers, then I do. I prefer things I can count simply on the fingers of one hand. Thankfully, leaving the magic 108 aside, yoga seems mercifully free of numbers. Or is it... After all, I have an Astanga-trained friend who... Continue Reading →

August 29, 2018 6

All too human

Recently I spent the day in London with an old friend from way, way back. I was interested to go to the All Too Human exhibition at the Tate. It seemed to me a rather eclectic collection of paintings (plus a few photos) from various artists which "celebrates the painters in Britain who strove to... Continue Reading →

August 23, 2018 1

Deep compassion

I've been avoiding someone from my past life for a while now. They hurt me a lot, in ways I'm only just coming to recognise, let along come to terms with. For the past few months these memories, long suppressed, have come out in my yoga practice. That's my laboratory and place of experimentation. How... Continue Reading →

August 20, 2018 4

Two year teaching anniversary

Facebook just alerted me to the fact that it's been two years now since I obtained my yoga teaching certificate. So I've been teaching that long! A 'time flies' moment if ever there was. How can I have learnt so much AND so little in this time? I remember one of the things that vexed... Continue Reading →