A Portable Practice A practice in your pocket isn’t about downloading an app you can tap into anywhere or belonging to a club, gang, or team. It’s about knowing how to access your practice without needing to recall a single pose. Like good personal trainers or physiotherapists, yoga teachers should advocate for agency—helping students take…
Why Blending Buddhism With Yoga Is Like Saying A ‘Hand Manicure’ Philosophy on top of philosophy, when does more becomes too much?Should we be looking at subtraction not addition to remain faithful to yoga at its core? Is the quiet power of yoga no longer enough? It’s easy to get caught up in the desire…
Is the current structure of yoga education just one more example of demanded obedience? The guru structure of no questions asked, being told and then expected to follow blindly? Updated quality education is executed WITH someone not TO someone – and should be a collaboration and application rather than a parroting of information that’s never…
How Does Yoga Teach Us the True Meaning of the Glass Half Full? Now I love being in a good stinking mood every now and again but have you ever caught yourself stuck in a cycle of negative thinking? Pratipaksha Bhavana—a concept from the Yoga Sutras (2.33)—is all about shifting perspective. It’s the ultimate “glass…
Consistency is a word I feel a bit icky using in regards to yoga as it has so many toxic connotations of working hard, gruelling schedules and well, it sounds like a drag. However, consistency can be the key to that elusive feel good quality you probably started yoga for in the first place –…
LOOKING AT YOGA: Drishti Translated as sight, view, vision, gaze and more, Drishti is basically a focused gaze. In every yoga pose, there’s a spot we can choose to look at (like a finger, wall or toe) and it can change to where our body is accessible or comfortable, but it’s not really about the…
If yoga was dramatically anti ageing, something undeniably measurable and with guaranteed results for all, well, I’d be typing this from my retirement compound full of dogs with an ageing portrait of myself in the attic. However, there IS evidence that yoga in both its physical and philosophical forms does have some pretty positive impact…
Comfy & Curious These two concepts can be great cornerstones to a yoga practice whether you are a student or a teacher. Could they even be an extreme simplification of all you need to remember in class? So, what do they mean and how can we use them? It’s easy to look at the words…
Kirtan Kriya is a traditional meditation practice from Kundalini Yoga. It involves using the mantra (‘muntra’) “Sa Ta Na Ma” while touching the thumb to each fingertip in a sequence, but don’t lose interest just yet, you may be surprised at a modern application. There are lots of different types of meditation and landing on…
Understanding the Gunas in Yoga Philosophy, to me, is exactly like the fable of Goldilocks. I am no academic so the way I make sense and apply philosophy may seem silly or disrespectful to some but I strongly believe in finding an access point that everyone can understand immediately from the get go rather…