Under examination

Remember my Sanskrit exams earlier this year? I wrote at the time about the small support network I gathered around myself as I put myself forward for these exams, feeling very much out of my depth but with a determination just to try and see what came from it. I tried to enjoy the accelerated... Continue Reading →

August 17, 2019 6

Support network

A support network can be really.... well, supportive! I'm not a big one for sharing all the details of my life (anonymous blog, geddit?) and I can in fact go a bit the other way and tend towards isolation in my liking for privacy. Privacy is kind of comfortable; there's no accountability in secrecy, no... Continue Reading →

May 21, 2019 5

Movie night

How much do teachers share their own practice with their students? I find this a constant balancing act. How to root teaching in my own experiences and practice while generalizing it enough to be accessible to a group? I went to class recently where I was baffled by a lot of what was offered, not... Continue Reading →

February 24, 2019 0

Telling stories

Telling stories. Telling stories. RE-telling stories I was formally trained to study the past. I used to be an archaeologist. My academic training taught me that there's usually more than one interpretation of the evidence and if you follow the more radical post-modern theories the past is unknowable and all interpretations become equally valid... Death... Continue Reading →

February 22, 2019 0

It’s my turn

So guru purnima is coming up and this is always a time of year when I take a little more time around and through my practice to reflect on my teachers, what they offer me, how I respond to that and how I might carry forward their teachings within my practice -- or not (yet).... Continue Reading →

July 19, 2018 0

Once good, twice even better

So I just gave my Second Ever Yoga Workshop today. I'm feeling super-proud and a teeny bit accomplished! But I'm keeping things really modest, baby steps and all. The groups were really small, a handful of students each time, and the second workshop was essentially a repeat of the first for those missed it. Repetition... Continue Reading →

June 16, 2018 2

Calling Ganesha

A yogi friend of mine’s just been found by Ganesha. She’s been seeing him everywhere recently, she says, to the point where she bought a murti for her home. And she’s started a mantra practice multiple times a day. We chanted together recently: 108 times oṃ gaṃ gaṇapataye namaḥ. I don’t usually repeat a mantra... Continue Reading →

October 21, 2017 4

Sore throat, big leap

I've had a sore throat for weeks now. It started when I was on holiday in Canada and has persisted. The accompanying cold disappeared weeks ago, but I'm still croaky. "It's psychosomatic" one of my yogi friends told me rather brusquely. Yogis can be so annoying right?! My teacher joked (I think it was a... Continue Reading →

September 2, 2017 6

Yoga training

I'm sitting my favourite way on the train -- facing backwards. I like to watch the landscape unfold in front of my eyes rather than seeking it out, craning forwards. It's like what one of my teachers says about receiving an asana rather than grasping for it. If there's a yoga of train journeys this... Continue Reading →

July 22, 2017 3

What’s the answer? What’s the question?

My boss is just back from a conference so we spent some time chatting about it. The major theme for us was understanding how to organise information or data and how we find the information we need. We talked about the possible relationship between the availability of data and the questions we choose to ask,... Continue Reading →