Full moon, full heart

It's guru purnima this weekend and I always use the date as a prompt to spend some time reflecting on the learning of the past year and the teachings and teachers that have guided me. My immediate thoughts always turn to my yoga teachers, but I also try to expand out to other influences of... Continue Reading →

July 24, 2021 2

Pride comes before

I've been writing out to my students quite regularly since the first lockdown. Even the ones who won't come to online classes drop me a line from time to time in reply, to tell me how much they value the continued contact. It's always sweet to hear from them. And it eases the awkwardness and... Continue Reading →

July 12, 2021 2

Being vocal

One of my close friends called. Her mum’s dying in hospital in US. She hasn’t been able to travel to visit her because of Covid restrictions. When I answered her call, she told me “I just wanted to hear your voice”. So we chatted a bit about nothing much, there being nothing really we could... Continue Reading →

May 9, 2021 2

An anniversary, happy or not

In UK we’ve been in one sort of lockdown or another for a year now. We have our famous ‘roadmap’ out, but it’s early days. This anniversary, such as it is, prompts retrospection and I’ve had conversations with many others as we look behind us and see how far we’ve come even while we are... Continue Reading →

April 17, 2021 1

Au revoir yogi

A year on almost and I still can’t decide how I feel about teaching yoga on zoom. I’m guessing I’m not alone in that. You know how it is — some days it feels great and the connection with students feels real and useful, other days it feels full of frustrations and communication fails and... Continue Reading →

March 23, 2021 0

Feeding the wolf

They say the wolf that grows bigger and thrives is the one you choose to feed. Lately I’ve been taking care what I ‘feed’. Or to put it another way I’ve been taking care how much I listen to the inner critical voices (the wolf inside of me), lessening the amount of fuel I give... Continue Reading →

March 11, 2021 3

Baggage train

I’m not a big fan of yoga teacher trainings. I pretty much hated my 200 hour end to end — which (I hasten to emphasise) says much more about me than about my patient teachers. I think they did a good job in 200 hours to set us up to be safe, competent enough, rooky... Continue Reading →

October 24, 2020 2

The privileged view

I remember the first time I encountered the idea of one’s physical posture reflecting one’s mental state, current or past (i.e. whether a reflection of stuff of the moment or a deeper expression of past experiences of whatever sort). It really made me angry. And afraid. I felt as though I was laid bare under... Continue Reading →

October 16, 2020 0

Changing our view

Hmm, the whole lockdown-pandemic thing is starting to bore me a bit. I know I’m lucky to have made it through 4 months or so before beginning to feel like this... and only in a minor way even now! Hah, perhaps all that yoga practice really does ‘work’! In UK it’s hard sometimes to believe... Continue Reading →

August 2, 2020 3

New trust

In these strange socially-distant times, where I haven’t physically interacted with anyone other than my husband for nearly eight weeks, I could easily regress into full on privacy mode, hiding myself at home away from the world. I’m deliberately not doing that. I was working quite hard on my ‘trust issues’ (horrible phrase, I know)... Continue Reading →