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Variety is the spice of life.

Sometimes our yoga practice can begin to die a slow death and then in an instant it can be revived just through the power of our attention and crucially - by slowing down.

Moving through our postures quickly can bring a sense of lightness but it can also mean that we miss out on those full bodied stretches, stretches where the very sinews are able to expand. We rush into our asanas and rigidity sets in so that expansion is no longer an option. Our bodies need a little time to get into these various shapes we embody.

Try this: stretch you leg from the lower abdomen, the stretch burrows deeply through the pelvis melting open the crease of the hips, the flesh of the thighs hugs on to the femur and the femur itself hugs onto the bone marrow, keeping the knee aligned you can feel the flesh of the calves extends toward the elastic tendon of the achilles heel. The arch of the foot contains no rigidity but naturally domes toward the inner knee and the inner knee continues its ascent toward the groin. The leg is switched on.

Through the full support of the legs we are naturally more grounded and our upper body is more energized as we literally can channel the energy of the earth, the feedback response from the magnetic draw of the earth rebounding and charging us as if we were plugged into sockets through the pores of the skin on the soles of our feet.

I sometimes practice in this way. My practice is richer when I slow down. As long as your mind doesn't drift off to the the distant planes of elsewhere I highly recommend it.

where is my...?

There is a very famous song by the Pixies where the singer asks earnestly "where is my mind?" I love that song, he may not be sure where his mind is but by the moving effect of his lyrics he sure knows where his core is.

I had the privilege of being invited to a day of mini lectures by top scientists, innovators and academicists at the Royal Institution in London where we the audience proceeded to have our minds blown by the lecturers. We were let in on the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence, the current breakthroughs in organ cloning, how solar energy is gradually becoming a real alternative, self-driving cars, the cities of the future, extracting hydrogen from aluminium and water, scientific solutions to altzheimers and a vaaaaast array of utterly enthralling ever evolving and increasingly more sophisticated pieces of knowledge.

It got me thinking, seeing as the crowd seemed to be overall much better informed than I and generally more on it, what exactly might the role of yoga be in this increasingly technological and ultra connected world we live in. There were a couple of points I took away from the lectures that I found particularly relevant, and chances are these are not news to you the reader but I felt like a pre schooler learning that red and yellow make orange

1. Neurones naturally want to connect. If you take the brain cells of two mice and put them in a dish they will look at a way of connecting, of communicating. This to me is fascinating. Essentially when we practice yoga we too are looking at ways of forming connections in ourselves, and as a community with other teachers, practitioners etc. In fact it is the very meaning of the word yoga: connection. I myself have felt in the very core of my being this very strong urge to communicate what I have learnt through my own practice.

2. The organisms that live in our gut are highly sophisticated and unique and possess their own neurones, our guts are in fact intelligent. This was not exactly news to me but it did get me thinking about the importance of sensitivity which is something we as yogis set about to cultivate constantly. When we realise just how intelligent our living, breathing, digesting body is we may pay it more heed and honour it as our greatest teacher

3. Virtual reality is going to play a big role in the future of humans. Up until now this idea makes me want to ask the planet to stop rotating so perhaps I may be allowed to step off, we are barely awake to real reality and seem to be less and less so with increasing digitisation and yet when put into context some of the developments in virtual reality I found utterly fascinating. For example  being able to simulate a frozen landscape for a victim of burn injuries undergoing surgery is umpteen times more effective than morphine as a method of pain relief. We have heard of meditators in the freezing Himalayas being able to increase their body temperature through meditation and this sort of research beautifully ties together this intrinsic mind-body relationship.

There were many more fascinating speakers speaking on a range of incredible topics, I was particularly enthused by one man who defined luck as a skill, the skill of being curious. The skill of being open to not just the unknown but that we can't even conceive of not knowing. 

It is in this spirit, of open curiosity and deep delving that I invite you to my next workshop on core yoga. Come along and we can have some fun exploring, even if we do know where our mind is!

Sunday, December the 4th, 6-8p.m at Yard Yoga, Forest Row, click here to book

from the gross to the subtle

A good yoga experience makes you remember to sit upright at your desk.  An alignment cue may come into your mind at any point throughout your day and remind you to exhale a little longer if you get het up in the supermarket queue, to sink your heels into the floor as you stir your cooking, or simply to get up and stretch when you get a chance. As your shoulders hike up to your ears at the first drop of rain, you notice yourself and let them drop. This sort of thing...

Yoga can transform you and yet from one yoga class to the next a lot of the good work seems to come undone. You arrive with your shoulders all bunched up again, with your hips in a tight, rigid mess, your chest constricted and all the worries in the world nagging in your inner ear. 

So how can we keep practicing yoga off the mat? I like to remember that this yoga we do is so much more than a physical practice, it is a form of mind training, bringing your awareness to everything you do. This sounds do-able but we need tools, we need tools to keep this awareness fresh. So that it doesn't simply become a concept, the concept of awareness. Another mental construct. 

I would like to offer up the practice of moola bandha as a way of bringing you back to the yoga practice in whatever situation you find yourself. As the most subtle practice of all, a shift of awareness is exactly what we're talking about here. Not so much the contraction of the entire structure of the hips, more the ever so subtle elevation of the perineum. A practice through which you can become embodied again. A practice which draws us away from this overactive mind and back into the body from where awareness can be truly cultivated. 

Seek out an experienced teacher and go forth to practice moola bandha. 

an exciting prospect

I was doing something mundane when a very inspiring thought brightened up my day. More and more people are getting into yoga, this is nothing new, the teachings of yoga reached the west long ago but big shifts occur over time, like the peristaltic shove of human consciousness.

All these millions of yogis who have been drawn to the practice for just as many reasons have nowhere to go but deeper. A small number of people may give up practice altogether but most become hooked, fascinated and completely transformed. These people who are transformed by yoga  are people waking up. The practice may initially be physical but very soon the more subtle effects can be felt and this spark ignites our very existence. 

The times we live in may be dark, some say we are living in kali yuga  the dark age , the age of disconnection for sure, but the next wave to come feels to be like a great one indeed.

I feel honoured to be a part of it. I salute my teachers for sharing their depth.

I am teaching a workshop on stepping up your yoga practice and learning about Moola Bandha, on sunday the 27th of November, 6-8p.m at Yard Yoga, Forest Row. Click here to book

how to never stop 1.

Sometimes our practice can become mechanical, we do what once worked and somehow it does no longer. We need to refresh, to inspire, to remember why we practice this yoga in the first place, our practice need never stop but sometimes we progress and leave our old practice behind.

Thank you to the great teachers who keep our practice alive, and here's a book by one of the greats, buy it, buy it now:

Love to love you

May we practice with our hearts and not with our brains. Through the heart we are elevated in the postures, through the brain we become rigid.

Our mind expands into every cell of our being and brings back messages, some of love, some of hate. We aren't always happy in our bodies. Our bodies aren't always happy with us either, but we're married and only through love will this marriage flourish. So acknowledge the upsets, work through them. Sometimes its all in the imagination, can we recognize this? Work hard to not make the same mistakes again and again.

In your yoga practice you can bring your attention to the physical heart. The space around the heart increases as you open your chest, or when you reach your arms overhead. Notice also the space behind the heart, this elevation all around, as if it were suspended in zero gravity, with no pressure on either side. Allow the heart to be big and notice, notice the sensations. Any gripping, closing, numbness, be attentive.

Practice with the heart and all the greatest gifts shall be yours.

at some point...

At some point something came into our consciousness that told us this yoga we do is hard, we need to suffer in the postures. We believe than in order to achieve anything there is a degree of self mollification. But yoga is not like this, in every moment that we practice we have the choice to be present and in the present there is no pain, no striving, no pushing, no forcing. Instead we can check ourselves constantly to see whether there is a holding,  a forcing, a resistance to being present. Let that be your work.

Are you gritting your teeth in a pose? are you hunching your shoulders? contracting your chest? holding on to your hips for dear life? We hold so much memory in the body also that areas that were stressed long ago can be the cause of unnecessary tension today, through this process of self observation we let go of these old hurts and literally begin to heal ourselves.

I believe the greatest tool when it comes to practicing in a way that creates expansion rather than tension is our breath. If we stop and wait for our breath to arise all gifts arise with it. The body has a natural tendency to expand on the inhalation and to release on the exhalation, we gather up all tension in the body and let it go. So make sure you exhale completely, not a drop of air remains in the lungs, you are empty and open like the present moment itself.

Its called awareness really, this constant presence.

I shall be teaching a workshop on releasing tension from the mooladhara in order to begin to work with moola bandha on the 27th of November at Yard Yoga, Forest Row, 6-8p.m Do join me!

another you

The mind can't help but to perceive the body as a solid object. And this sense of solidity, albeit illusory is a useful way of beginning to tune into the whole-ness of our human being.
 We begin by noticing our solidity, our physical body. In yoga our physical body is referred to as annamaya kosha and is the first of five sheaths that make up the person. It is also the one most anchored in duality as it is our grossest form and it is not until our awareness penetrates the more subtle layers of our being that we begin to experience a greater unity with other beings and ultimately with the universe itself. This is meant to be pretty blissful. We taste it in savasana and deep meditation.

Beginning by noticing our solidity we then notice the subtle rhythm of the breath, the in flow, the out flow, the dance of breath around our body. A conscious breath is a prana rich breath, is a breath that infuses our cells with energy. And our breath dances in our spine most beautifully, our spine reacts by throwing off its shackles, by dancing, by ascending...

The asanas are brought to life by the beautiful spiral dynamic of our spines, this pulsating free radical, the kundalini, the scaravelli, the expanded vertebrae, the stream of life flowing through our synaptic pathways... there is so much that inspires as we travel away from mere solidity into subtler, deeper realms and we begin to experience a different version of ourselves, freed from the restraints of the ol' stiff back.

We become acquainted with our pranamaya kosha, or energy body and a relationship ensues.

I shall be running a workshop that explores the sacrum-skull connection in yoga on the 20th of November at Yard Yoga, Forest Row, click here to read more

keep on keeping on

As we enter the winter months, it can be tempting to stay in bed longer and we lose those early hours, we can begin to skip our practice sessions, perhaps preparing for the busy-ness and distractions of christmas time, the delicate grace of autumn passing us by.

Many of us practice... and then don't practice....and then practice and on and on. To be a yogi one has yoga as a constant in ones' life. We may practice and at times we may not practice but we come back, just as the waves wash back to shore just as the sea swell of our inhalation arises from a profound exhalation.

We are tender with our discipline, we relish our stillness just as we thrive in our activity, and all the ups and downs and highs and lows we greet with this mild curiosity, what the yogis call equanimity.

The days get colder but what obstacle is 'cold' to our practice? we can soon warm up as we greet our core with some short sharp abdominal exhalations, as we spread our solar plexus allowing the lungs to expand all the way into the lower rib cage, nourishing the kidneys.

Move slowly but think sharp, be precise with your alignment but not harsh and all good things will come. It is helpful to loosely wrap a length of cloth around your middle and keep your feet bare. Socks are restrictive and it is hard to get good purchase down through the feet so be brave and stretch the toes, stretch all the way through the leg, stretch your limbs from your centre.

When we practice in this way, cold is no obstacle, This body of ours is ours to experiment in, it is our laboratory, no one elses'! And all those tensions we carry around, like dead autumn leaves we allow them to shed, to drop away as we melt in the knowledge that we are doing the best we can.