Pockets We talk a lot about community in yoga. Building community. Supporting community. Growing community. It’s one of the most commonly used words in the wellness industry but sometimes I wonder if what we’re really talking about is something much smaller. Most of us don’t serve “the community”. We serve a pocket of it; our…
Walking is brilliant – BUT Your bones don’t get stronger from just walking. Bone is living tissue, it adapts to load just like muscle. Use it and it gets stronger. Don’t use it and it gets weaker. So what actually fills bone? •Mechanical loads •Muscle force •Impact •Progressive overload Your bones and joints need stress…
The Thing Isn’t The Thing Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist known for finding profound truths in ordinary moments, once told a story about going out to buy a single envelope. His wife suggested he buy a hundred and keep them in a cupboard. It would be more efficient. More sensible , yes, but efficiency wasn’t really…
Is being positive a coping mechanism or a defence mechanism We’ve all met people who seem endlessly positive. They always find the silver lining, remind us that “everything happens for a reason,” or encourage us to “look on the bright side.” Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Other times it can feel dismissive, as though…
What if your discipline is just your anxiety in a nicer outfit? One of the stranger things I’ve noticed in yoga is how often tidiness becomes a moral virtue. Teachers jokingly shame students who don’t put props away. Mats must line up perfectly. Blocks must be stacked just so. Somewhere along the way someone quotes,…
The Value of Taking the Scenic Route We seem to be living in an age of optimisation. Faster internet. Faster deliveries. Faster workouts. Faster recovery. Artificial intelligence promises to write our emails, summarise our meetings and answer our questions before we’ve even finished thinking of them. Efficiency has become a moral virtue but…
Uncertainty is the technology of possibility. What a great sentence. Could doubt really be a place of discovery? The idea that NOT knowing is a super power to harness, not to fear or avoid. Uncertainty can show up as finances, the future or even simple daily events such as what we should eat or what…
A lot of us grew up thinking exercise had one job: shrink us. So of course it feels like a chore. Of course it’s easy to skip. If the only measure of success is a number on a scale or seeing visible change then any day without these “results” feels pointless and any discomfort feels…
Group Classes: The Meeting Point of Movement and Philosophy The online yoga space loves a dichotomy. Scroll long enough and you’ll notice the tension: on one end, group classes are dismissed as exclusionary or superficial, and on the other, there’s the idea that realyoga is found only in stillness, study or pure philosophy. I’ve seen…
Most of us have had that awful feeling where someone posts a photograph of us looking like a potato. You know the one, your face looks like a melted candle and now everyone’s seen it. Bit embarrassing. But imagine being Arjuna (main character of The Bhagavad Gita, yogas ancient philosophical guidance text) You’ve just had…