The world’s third International Yoga Day is TODAY! This morning India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi led more than 50,000 yogis in an outdoor yoga practice in Lucknow. Inaugurated by Modi in 2014, International Yoga Day is celebrating its third birthday with yoga sessions being held in its honour worldwide, from Macchu Pichu to an Indian […]
As my YogaLondon training wisely taught me, teaching yoga requires linguistic and physical flexibility. As a keen poet and writer, this is one of the things I love most about yoga, and when words flow seamlessly around the physicality of poses, it’s a kick like no other. However, some days vinyasas can feel like the
It’s your regular weekly vinyasa class, packed with students and suddenly, that former student who was pregnant walks in. She’s had her baby! Great and now…..what do you do? What are your post-natal techniques? How do you adjust for this new mom? Here’s some clues – This is generally what’s happening for that Mum: She’s spent
Plastic pollution is a huge environmental disaster. Since Blue Planet II aired last year, the public has grown more and more outraged at the vast quantities of waste plastic polluting the entire planet. It has also been a wake-up call for us as consumers to change our ways for the better. As yoga practitioners one
Do you sit in front of a computer for hours every day? Do you ever feel chair-shaped and get neck pain, headaches or eye strain? I know I do if I’ve been a slave to my editor (only kidding! Sort of…). Whatever the case, the trick lies with the way you’re sitting. If you’ve read my article
Go to any yoga class in the capital and you’ll be hard pushed to find more than a couple of token men. Which is ironic, as, in the 5,000 years or so of yoga history it is only within the last 80 years that yoga has been opened up as a practice to women. For
There are a lot of reasons people say that yoga isn’t for them. They may say the’yre too inflexible, maybe not fit enough, a bit too old, worried about the balancing or afraid of making a fool of themselves. Well, the good news is that none of that matters! Yoga is for all shapes and
I had a teacher once tell me that the hips were the ‘junk drawer’ of the body. They store all sorts of emotions, trauma and anything you are unconsciously holding on to. That’s why if you fully surrender into a hip opener, all the built-up emotions can release. I hear stories of people in classes
There can be so much chaos in our outer and inner worlds. It can be overwhelming, confusing, depressing, and frustrating. And while we cannot fully control what happens outside of us, we can control what happens inside of us. It is through Ayurveda we are taught how to maintain a healthy mind, body, and spirit.
What is drishti? Concisely, drishti is a focused gaze. We might have attempted to use it in yoga classes, especially when we’re endeavouring to balance in tree pose, but there is much more to this topic than meets the eye – or gaze. Let’s put drishti under the microscope. The Sanskrit word drishti literally means
