I don’t understand – but I trust

So, once again I am on the brink of leaving my ‘regular’ life behind to leap into the abyss and explore some more of what this crazy, beautiful planet has to offer. It has been such a journey getting to this point, and it still feels strange. I am a bundle of emotions – sadness

Bringing the niyamas to life – Svadhyaya

As a quick reminder, the niyamas are five personal qualities mentioned in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that we’re encouraged to cultivate within ourselves, to help us on our yoga path. In this article we’re looking at the fourth niyama: ‘Svadhyaya’, which means ‘self-study’. I warn you now, I may go off on one a bit in

Bringing the Niyamas to Life – Tapas

At the last workshop we looked at the third niyama, ‘tapas’, which is often translated along the lines of ‘fiery discipline’.  This is the quality that helps us to keep going when things become difficult.  We all reach a stage in our practice after the initial love affair fades when our relationship with yoga is

Bringing the Niyamas to Life – Santosha

As a quick reminder, the niyamas are five personal qualities mentioned in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that we’re encouraged to cultivate within ourselves, to help us on our yoga path. Building on August’s article on ‘saucha’ (cleanliness or purity), we now move onto looking at the second niyama: ‘santosha’, which means contentment. Aah, the elusive contentment… I

Bringing the niyamas to life – Saucha

The niyamas are the second limb of yoga, as outlined in Patanjali’s yoga sutras.  Along with the first limb, the yamas, these two limbs together form the ethical code of conduct that creates the foundation bedrock of the yoga path.  If you use the analogy of the tree of yoga, the five yamas and five

Bringing the yamas into daily life

This summer I’ve been running monthly workshops to delve a little deeper into the subject of yoga.  The theme of the workshop series has been the ‘yamas’ – the code of good personal ethics set out by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras text, which form the first limb of the eight limbs of yoga.  Along

The Recent History of the Living Yoga Tradition

Whilst in India, I was struck with how the cultural heritage and history of yoga and the lineage of yoga teaching is placed in high esteem amongst those teaching and practising yoga there.  This inspired me to write the following article, which aims to explain where the yoga we practice in the west largely comes

The power of observation

So, yesterday I did pasasana for the first time in the big shala. Has the world changed since that moment? Have I become a better person because of it? Of course not! But it felt good to be moving forward nevertheless… 🙂 As usual, my heels didn’t touch the floor and I placed my towel

Sharath conference notes – 14th March 2015

Here goes my attempt to capture (most) of what Sharath said at yesterday’s conference. Again, no dictaphone – I tried, but I mostly picked up my own breathing, occasional coughs and the murmurs of one of the amazingly well-behaved babies in the room, who happened to be behind me. The happy contentment of all those

Sharath conference notes – March 7th 2015

I’ve noticed on the Ashtanga Community in Mysore facebook page that there are a few requests for write-ups of Sharath’s conference notes. Well, seeing as I simply cannot stop myself from taking copious notes whenever anyone is talking to me (I think it’s how my brain processes information) I thought I should answer the call. However,