At the heart of the mountain

“So, does anyone have any questions?” the teacher turned her face to look around the room, deliberately taking everyone in, no-one excluded. That’s her way. There was a silence. Perhaps the other students were as blown away as I was. We were on the last day of a week’s retreat, with 4 hours of yoga... Continue Reading →

May 24, 2025 2

Feel the joy!

I remember a picture I loved, that really inspired me. I told my teacher about it when I was studying backbends with him. It was a beautiful image of a girl doing urdhva hastasana. An outdoor setting, she had loose hair pulling free in the breeze, there was glowing sunshine and her posture was one... Continue Reading →

April 2, 2025 0

Begin again

Back when I met with my teacher regularly, I used to enjoy telling him what I was working on in my practice, what was interesting me, what I perceived as the challenge to address, how it evolved over the months until it turned into something different. The sharing of it was a key part of... Continue Reading →

January 18, 2025 1

General public

I had a small gynae procedure yesterday. It might have been ‘routine’ for the clinical staff but it was a pretty extreme experience for me and way more painful than I was expecting. At one point one of the assisting nurses told me to ‘do yoga breathing’ as she could see I was struggling with... Continue Reading →

September 10, 2024 1

Wild Weekend

Life in my forties seems crammed with new experiences -- which is somehow, and wonderfully, not how I expected my ‘middle years’ (groan!) to play out. I’m just back from my first ever wild camping trip. So many new experiences here: hiking further in 2 days than I ever have before (and being told off... Continue Reading →

August 24, 2024 7

The tree listens

I sat with someone recently and told them my pain, my grief and my confusion. We were outside, always the best place for emotions to be expressed, digested, perhaps laid to rest even. I had chosen the spot, under a tree-friend of mine, where I’d been doing my yoga practice for some days. There were... Continue Reading →

July 6, 2024 2

Yin’s a tonic

I just came back from a Yin class. It was a ‘treat’ from Hubby. I say ‘treat’ with a tone of cynicism as I’m not super keen on going to yoga classes at the moment. It’s not that they’re bad in themselves, please don’t misunderstand me. It’s just recent history with yoga studios and what... Continue Reading →

December 23, 2023 4

A Narrative of Ease

I was messaging a teacher recently about her upcoming classes and workshops as I tried to decide which to attend: should I make a weekend of it, involving intercity travel, and overnight accommodation for a two day teachers course which would be very worthy and useful? Or should I just pop to London for a... Continue Reading →

October 5, 2023 0

Getting creative

Once upon a time creativity in yoga would have meant to me something about nifty sequencing or exploring unusual transitions between poses. Yep, I’m a vinyasa girl! Nowadays creativity is more about generating something for myself rather than being creative or artistic in my yoga practice. I’m exploring how to create more of what I... Continue Reading →

September 14, 2023 2

Mindful teaching

I'm part way through teaching a short course on mindfulness to a small group of students. It's my first time teaching a sustained course over two months and my first time teaching mindfulness. I was not at all sure it would work, that I could do it, or what the students would bring to it... Continue Reading →