Admit it, lockdown has been weird. No judging, but it was weird. With regular work hours, travel, socialising and general ease of life suddenly stopping, everything was turned upside down and inside out. No longer having the need jump out of bed, I now loll under the duvet. My hope is either to fall asleep […]
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder affects 1-2% of the population, and is concerned with both obsessions and compulsions. You might remember Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character, Raymond Babbitt, who’s OCD forced him to follow a ritualistic pattern of routine. Although an extreme example, Babbitt’s OCD governed how many fish sticks he could eat at any given time, and
This year has been tough. We have all been impacted in some way or another by the Covid-19 pandemic. You might have caught the virus, and are still recovering. You might have lost someone you love. You will almost certainly have lost business, or been furloughed, had to change the way you work or lost
As we head into this brave new not-quite-post-pandemic world it’s fair to ask about the need for yoga teachers. Now that we’ve adapted to doing yoga online, should we just be posting Youtube videos and letting people get on with it? There can be no denying that over the past eighteen months the yoga industry
In a world of ever-increasing anxiety, what does yoga have to offer? Nearly one in five people in the UK experienced anxiety in 2013-14, and record levels of anxiety are being reported in teenagers. So can yoga for anxiety and panic attacks really help, and if so, how? As most of us are aware, the
Many people are attracted to yoga by its physicality rather than its spirituality. Teaching some simple deep breathing techniques is a great way to introduce pranayama to novice yogis. So What is Pranayama Anyway? In its simplest form, pranayama is just deep breathing. Yes, we can make it technical by using only one nostril, closing
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a nasty business. Anyone can experience PTSD, however the most likely victims to fall foul of this psychiatric disorder are: firefighters, rape victims, prisoners of war, war veterans, witnesses of natural disaster, and car crash survivors. Normally a trauma survivor’s stress reaction will recover in time. However for some, their stress response
‘Hooray! Yoga classes can start in person again from May 17th! Everything can go back to normal!’ This is how most yoga teachers and students are expected to be feeling. We have been told that lockdown is hard, teaching online is second best to in-person classes, and that we should all be champing at the
I never understood that I had a responsibility to supervise my relationship with myself. I never considered it possible that my mind could become so feral, so contaminated, that it would begin to work against me each and everyday day, until I was so weakened, so submissive, that I became completely entrapped in the claws
Ashley Russell is an experienced yoga teacher and trainer, choreographer, registered mental health nurse, and EMDR trauma therapist (recently highlighted in Prince Harry’s new documentary on mental health). He talks to YogaLondon about growing up gay in the 80s, about trauma therapy, and how yoga gave him a place to simply be a ‘body in
