Firstly, if you’re on my mailing list, don’t worry, you’ve not signed up for anything new by accident. Over the summer I’ve been having a Big Think about what I want to share with people and how, and as a result, I’m moving the mailing list most of you have already signed up to onto Substack, and I think you’ll like the changes that come with it. I want to tell you my reasons for doing this, because if you share content with your own online community, you might find it useful. Firstly, I am not enjoying social media much these days, are you? Whatever your platform(s) of choice, most of them ar ..read more

Over the past couple of months, there’s been an interesting series of pieces in the mainstream press about yoga. I’m sure many of you have read at least one of them, but possibly not the whole thread of responses. In fact, if you’re like me, you only skim the headlines of most mainstream media ‘articles’ on yoga, which almost always come under the ‘lifestyle’ heading, and have more of the tone of a puff piece in a magazine than actual journalism. You know the sort of thing: ‘try this new yoga fad that helps you trim your waistline with the aid of this gimmick, all your favourite celebs are doi ..read more

At the weekend I had a small gathering for some of my apprentices. For the last few years they’ve been on a journeying path with me, as I attempt to pass on at least a little of what I have learned in a couple of decades of pathwork* and study with Tira. We had a lovely pixie scramble through the hedgerows in the heat, and shared food, good conversation and a little gentle fire ritual. At various points, the talk turned to the menopause, as it tends to when the group is mostly peri- and post-menopausal people. I don’t think it’s a topic many of us discuss well, or often even at all. I see a lo ..read more

Recently I had the pleasure of being a guest on a slightly unlikely podcast – The Moon and Your Mind. I’m not really into astrology, but the hosts and I had a long conversation full of wild tangents and laughter. I had a lot of fun and I think they did too. They pulled me up on a line from my bio – that I am a lover of wild things and wild places, and the simple miracle of life itself. They asked where I was finding magic at the moment. It’s not the kind of question people usually ask me. I’m most often invited to talk on serious issues, to give a diplomatic opinion on some contentious aspect ..read more

I ran the first session of the Yoga Studies Reading Group this month, and I’m so glad I’m doing this. It was a small but engaged group, and the conversation flowed really nicely. If you’re thinking of joining us, sign up with Nourish, drop into the Google classroom to pick up the relevant reading, and turn up with a cuppa. For our first meeting, I chose a thought-provoking article by Dominik Wujastyk titled Medical Error and Medical Truth: The Placebo Effect and Room for Choice in Ayurveda. The article is described as an attempt: “to promote Daniel Moerman’s concept of the medical “meaning re ..read more

I’m starting a Yoga Studies Reading Group with Nourish. Each month I will select one resource (an academic article or extract), and we’ll get together on a Zoom call and discuss it. My aim is to share knowledge in a supportive environment where no question is too silly, and no response too strange to consider together. If you’re curious, you can find out more here: https://www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/documents/advanced-evaluation-using-prompt.pdf ): Presentation, Relevance, Objectivity, Method, Provenance, and Timeliness. It’s worth reading that guidance in full. How do I read it? Unle ..read more

I think that all good educators are valued not just for what they know, nor what they can impart to others, but for their ability to inspire – to help their students get excited about new ideas and new ways of thinking. After all, this is what will get the student through the next essay, or get them coming back to their mat, or make it easier to prioritise their studies. Dividing my time as I do these days between university teaching and training yoga teachers, I’m aware of two growing trends: a hunger for authentic inspiration and a sense of overwhelm. To put it simply, we’re all doing a litt ..read more

A little while ago, my friend and co-conspirator Harriet and I asked yoga teachers on social media to answer a couple of questions: What’s the silliest thing you’ve heard a yoga teacher say? And: What’s the worst thing you’ve heard a trainer say in a workshop? In the first part of this post, I did a little categorisation and analysis on the first question, ‘What’s the silliest thing you’ve heard a yoga teacher say?’ I talked about anatomically impossible metaphors, oppressive platitudes, repeated misinformation, and teachers who shout at students to relax. Let’s turn the tables this time by lo ..read more

A little while ago, my friend and co-conspirator Harriet and I asked yoga teachers on social media to answer a couple of questions: What’s the silliest thing you’ve heard a yoga teacher say? And: What’s the worst thing you’ve heard a trainer say in a workshop? We were actually asking these as part of a major writing project that we’ve been working on for over a year. It involves some of your favourite yoga teachers and thinkers, as well as some you will be delighted to meet for the first time. But I can’t tell you more about that just yet – we’re currently negotiating with publishers. On the o ..read more

Working with me I have the privilege of being asked to be a guest faculty member on yoga teacher trainings around the world. Most of these invitations have come about when I know the programme or the training provider in some way. Occasionally someone approaches me out of the blue and I check them out online a bit, and ask a few questions. The truth is, I am quite careful who I work with these days. Over the years I’ve become a safe person for yoga teachers to share all sorts of experiences with. Some of those experiences are of times that a senior teacher or trainer treated them badly – throu ..read more