All of us can relate to times we’ve felt exhausted, emotionally drained and disappointed in ourselves; times where a familiar narrative leads to an emotional hijack that resonates from the past and a distress pattern we can’t contain, control or prevent.  It doesn’t matter how much we determine it won’t happen again, we seem to find ourselves in the messy reality of picking up the pieces, feeling fragile, uncared for and sad. These cycles that can play out repeatedly in relationship, family, work or social exchange keep signalling us to ask the question – how can we get out of these cyc ..read more

Throughout our life we keep meeting the delusion that our happiness rests only in the hands of others. At times this can feel intoxicatingly wonderful and at others hopelessly lost. We don’t realise that these cycles of boom and bust; the whirlwind romances, the abyss of an ending, and every feeling tone in between are all part of the same story. As we imprint the known onto the unknown with our version of love, laden with expectations and assumptions, we keep confirming our identity as we believe it to be. We tend towards believing our struggles lie exclusively in forces outside ourselves and ..read more

​Over the years Hugh has had the privilege to meet many people who have shared different experiences and challenges whilst seeking support and restoration to re-find balance. Some have been living with life-long chronic conditions where pain has diminished their everyday life, others have faced diagnoses of terminal illness or abrupt loss. Whether it’s a seismic shift or the everyday we are dealing with – the restless, the hot and searing, the lethargy that sinks inwards beneath the skin or the numbness of a black hole inside us, at some stage all of us find ourselves out of our depth and at ..read more

It can feel very personal when things we take for granted suddenly change. Many of us experience this through falling ill, grief, a change of circumstances or relationships and a multitude of other different situations. Recently for me, it came with a change in environment.  Having arrived early in Leh in Ladhak to co-lead a retreat, I had allowed myself a few days to acclimatise. One of the challenges of being more than 11000 ft above sea level is activities you take for granted don’t happen in the same way. Whether it’s walking a few hundred metres which takes so much more effort or w ..read more

  Change, of course, comes in many guises, both the planned and the unknown. Some is eagerly awaited – a new job, relationship, travel or an expanding home and others feared, where the possibility of loss and diminishment preoccupies our thoughts, however much effort we put into distracting ourselves.       Trying to control change is where it gets complicated and it’s easy to end up with a whole lot more tension to cope with. What can we do that will make a difference when change inevitably happens – whether planned for or unexpected and how can we stay in bal ..read more

  The practice of Yoga has come to mean many things to many people and is embraced widely for its wonderful physical benefits and regulation of our day to day mental health. For some this is sufficient as this experience of Yoga has fulfilled its purpose. For others, the physical postures can be an end to pursue in itself, expressed through ever more challenging and complex postures with the harnessing of physical discipline to execute them. Like many other forms of physical ability this requires both a mental development and discipline (often identified as mindfulness) coupled with inte ..read more

Not long ago I was in the mountains alone, travelling light with just a bivouac for shelter. The weather was poor and then got worse. Deep in cloud, my senses tuned into every shape and form in the landscape to find the best way through. I was in a deep state of listening, listening to myself and the wider environment, the landscape, the strength of the wind, judging the steepness of the ground, assessing risk, appreciating the security of a handhold or the presence of an animal track when there was one, taking care when there wasn’t. Safely navigating meant accepting my vulnerability and th ..read more

From the ravages of war to damaged personal relationships and financial insecurity, each one of us will at some point face the challenge of change that inevitably comes  with human life. It is a fact, whatever our personal resources and situation, that all birth leads to aging and death, the ultimate cycle of change none of us will swerve. So a relevant question for all of us to reflect on is:   Do crises only bring difficulty or might they also bring us a clue to our wellbeing and happiness?   In times of crisis it’s natural to react with resistance, we don’t want it or like i ..read more

Many of us initially approached yoga asana practice attracted by what it can do for us physically and mentally. I can certainly remember being surprised how inflexible and unsupple I was in my 20’s even though I considered myself to have a high level of fitness. Yoga offered a different way of inhabiting my body and it wasn’t long before I was hooked on the benefits. As we practice, we develop new movement patterns, range of motion, flexibility and muscular strength and if we are fortunate we are guided how best to think of our body in terms of bones, joints, muscles, orientation, shape, weig ..read more

We’re all familiar with situations where we’ve been on the receiving end of someone else imposing their will, and how that closes us down rather than opens us up.  The challenge for us all is to recognize that whilst our will is the route to productivity and achieving results, it’s a blunt tool on its own. When we attempt to impose our will the wider impact gets missed along with the opportunity for connection with others. Words and behaviour can become ungenerous and cause harm in ways that slip under the radar whilst ‘getting the job done’ ‘meeting the goal’ or perhaps most aptly summ ..read more