Yoga

13/03/2025

Tensegrity is a very helpful way of understanding our bodies, how we are able to stand up, move and enjoy yoga.

Our bodies are complex so it helps to start with simple examples and go from there.

Here’s an introduction to tensegrity that I’ve written with my Gokhale Method teacher hat on.

In our culture a loss of up to 50% of the height of the discs as we age from our twenties to our fifties is considered normal. It follows that the herniations, nerve pain, and arthritic change that accompanies this chronic degeneration of our discs is also not seen as unusual. Pain and reduced abili...

01/09/2024

India has given us yoga and the numbers we use. Trips to Aldi & Tesco would be much more difficult if we still used the old Roman number system.

The flow of knowledge from India to Europe on everything from maths to astronomy has gone unacknowledged by historians

14/07/2024

I share his enthusiasm for yoga, though in my case it’s been a 48 year journey through at least 6 different styles of yoga, including a “hot” yoga.

Yoga inside an inflatable “bouncy castle” is proving a big commercial success - it appeals to people who would not otherwise have touched yoga with a barge pole.

Traditionally asana yoga, the yoga of poses, postures and flows was simply preparation for the raja or royal yoga of meditation, preparing us for a “steady seat”. The pretzel yoga of contortions & shapes can be fun - but it is just 1 doorway into the much deeper practice of yoga.

It boosts flexibility, strength, balance, breathing and mood … Here are the stupid reasons I avoided it for so long – and 21 things I’ve learned since I embraced it

07/07/2024

I made a mistake on Thursday and did a couple of things that I know play badly in my body with a sacrum that can rotate causing SI joint pain and a fibro type response.

Paid the price Friday: general pelvic pain, fibro fog & zero energy - hit the sack by 7pm exhausted.

Yoga, particularly working with the gathering of the limbs to the spine, containment and rebalancing my sacrum has worked a treat. Felt so much better Saturday that I could head down to the boat, enjoying some time on the river Dart.

It's so easy to get used to a certain way of feeling & being, even getting complacent. My mistake and how quickly I could recover feels almost miraculous.

03/06/2024

Midway through my training to be a yoga teacher I was trying rather too hard to “achieve” a pose. The course tutor came over and bluntly told me “John you have a problem with your chitta!”.

This is usually politely translated as”mind-stuff”. She used the more direct “mind-sh*t”. Took a while to process that, but she was absolutely right.

The moment you try to be “good” at yoga it turns sour. Love this article by Zoe Williams.

The more self-actualised you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people’s problems on their failure to be as healthy as you, writes Zoe Williams

10/03/2024

An intelligent discussion of hyper mobility, which can too easily be mistaken for being “good at yoga”.

‎Show BodyTalk with David Lesondak, Ep Understanding Hypermobility with Chris and Ann Frederick - 2 May 2023