Ikigai – what is your reason for being?

At this time of my life I feel I’m moving into a new chapter of service, and so I am really taking time to ask myself lots of seemingly old questions in a new way, wanting to crystallise who it is that I want to be in the world, and what it is that I

Detoxifying the mind

NB This article appeared in a newsletter to my yoga students earlier this year but at the time I didn’t dare to unleash it on the internet. But, today, I realised quite how pertinent it is to the topic of saucha, which I have just blogged about, and so again I man up and speak

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

Mistaking the stick for a snake

I am fascinated by the Vedas – these are a collection of four ancient Indian tomes covering a huge range of esoteric subjects, including some of the earliest known references to yoga. It is said that the wisdom that they contain was received directly from the divine by enlightened beings, or ‘seers’, and, for thousands

Expanding into sparseness

Today I woke to the monochrome beauty of a snowy morning and felt my usual childlike excitement at the world having changed so dramatically whilst we slept. I pestered my partner into wakefulness and soon we were striding through the cold air, red-cheeked and puffing steam from our mouths. We stopped and stood for a

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

Losing attachment

This morning Sharath adjusted me in dropbacks again, and the tip of one my fingers brushed the back of my heel. Progress. When I came back up, he said to one of the adjusters hovering nearby, ‘She has finished full primary now.’ The adjuster nodded and gave me a small smile. I felt a thrilling tingle

Lessons learned – an essay on anger and guilt

I’ve just returned to Mysore from Rajasthan, ‘up north’ – like back home, it’s significantly more chilly up there! So, I’ve said on here before that I feel like India is teaching me all kinds of lessons, and not necessarily the ones I expected – well, last week was no different. You may have noticed I’ve been

It starts with a dream…

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” Buddha So, it’s almost here. It began with what felt like an impossible, whimsical dream, then it became something I dared to talk about to people and, a few years on, finally it’s happening.  In just

Natural lunar cycles

With tomorrow being a full moon, I feel compelled to share a recent lunar-based discovery that I made. I recently finished a book called Wildwood, A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin, who is probably my favourite nature-writer. His love of and attunement to British wildlife comes through strongly in his books and I relate to