Buy! Buy! Buy! Black Friday! Pre-Christmas offers! The hysterical consumer frenzy begins as the month of November draws to a close. So let’s take a minute to look back at the month just gone and enjoy it for what it was: not Christmas. Yoga and Cultural Appropriation: Is Yoga Cultural Theft? The withdrawal of a […]
We are not all bendy. Even if you are born bendy, that flexibility tends to reduce with age – unless you do something about it. Every yogi knows that yoga is a GREAT way to maintain flexibility as you grow older. And even if you have the flexibility of an ironing board, yoga will help
What Is Antigravity Yoga? Imagine a room with sumptuous silk hammocks draped from a high ceiling. In each hammock a yoga student is working through their yoga practice using the hammock to support parts or all of their body. Maybe the hammock is under the front thigh in Warrior, then under the back in Upward-facing
Yoga chitta vritti nirodha. This is how Patañjali defines yoga in the second sutra. It translates as, calming the fluctuations of the mind. Aside from the obvious fact that traditionally, yoga is not practised to a soundtrack coming from an iPod, this argument lies in the notion that by providing distractions such as music during our
This week I saw an advert you may be interested in on a yoga forum: Male and female advanced asana practitioners wanted for London advertising photo shoot. Must be able to perform asana such as one-arm handstand (male), mayurasana in lotus (female), tittibhasana, strong backbends (touching feet in urdhva dhanurasana, scorpion, dragonfly, standing splits and
As a novice yogi, I clearly remember the frustration of poor upper body strength. My shoulders were so weak that chaturaṅga daṇḍāsana resembled a breakdancing caterpillar and iconic poses like bakāsana (crow) and handstands were an impossible dream. But I was not alone. Many people lack strength in their shoulders when they first come to
2020 has not been the easiest. The world has had to adjust to loss, lockdowns, restrictions, kids at home, job losses, and a whole pile of not-nice things. But one thing that many people say has got them through this year is their pets. Dog and cats don’t care if we’re in lockdown or not.
New Year, New Me At the end of last year a very inspiring article encouraged me to set myself a challenge: an hour of yoga a day for a year. On the 31st December I began my journey. There were a couple of reasons behind wanting to do it: I want to deepen my yoga
According to B.K.S. Iyengar there are four stages to yoga: commencement, intent endeavour, intimate knowledge and consummation. Following from my article ‘5 Good Reasons To Start Yoga‘ from last week, I’m going to assume that we can tick the ‘commencement’ box — and that’s a big tick as it’s very true that the hardest step
I often tell myself not to compare things, not to measure one thing against the other but to simply accept each thing for what it is: everything is perfect in its own way. However the one comparison I have often found myself coming back to again and again – with myself, with friends and with
