Yogi James

26/02/2025

A Ganga Dip with the Big Man on MahaShivaratri 🔱❤️✨🕉️


📷 .amit

09/07/2024

The half-way mark on the 300-hour Teacher Training 💚🕉️✨🌱

Epic team with and

22/06/2024

Excited to be back teaching with and this Monday on our Advanced-Level 300-hour training!

This course only happens once annually and took more than a year of my life to create.

I always had a vague idea of how to create an exceptional 300-hour… but couldn’t pin it down. It was only in 2022 when I went into isolation in a month-long plant medicine retreat in the Amazon that the curriculum was fully born.

Massive thanks to our teacher for bringing us together. Last year was already a dream-team but we’ve made a bunch of changes and improvements and so this year the course is even better.

Hari Om!

10/03/2024

Bumped into my old teacher Stewart Gilchrist on the streets of Rishikesh… of course within five mins, a film crew had pulled over and wanted him to feature in a music video 😹🔱🕉️✨🙏🏼

04/03/2024

Sunset times with friends in Rishikesh 🕉️❤️

12/10/2023

Please do click and like on their page 😊🙏🏼

Researching destination yoga teacher training retreats? You know, the ones where you spend a month in Bali? Here's what you need to know.

03/10/2023

Hey friends

Just did my first paid gig writing for YogaJournal 😊

And they’ve asked me to continue writing for them 🎊

It would help me a lot if you click on the link (and read it, cause the tech checks that! 😂)

It would help me even more if you chose to share it anywhere ❤️

Many thanks and big love

James ❤️

Link in the comments

18/09/2023

The best sleep spot for the gym cat .gym.crossfit

15/09/2023

Have been switching between the Neenca and the LP for the last few weeks. Neenca looks way more impressive with the hinges and steel supports, but I think I actually prefer the LP - just feels like more well distributed support.

Let me know if there’s another support out there that you prefer?

27/07/2023

05/06/2023

I didn’t realise the importance of community until I lost it.

In the “before times”, I felt connected to 4 main communities in different parts of the world and I used to proudly and loudly love my life; travelling between them each year on a little circuit - india/Thailand/London/Scandinavia - and flitting between being a student and a teacher.
Life was good.
I felt at home in several places.
I felt wanted, needed, loved, useful.

But from 2018 every community that I was connected to started to fall apart. Either rocked by abuse scandals in the spiritual world or taken out by Covid.

At the time I didn’t really notice because I had fallen madly, head over heels in love with a woman. As these spiritual groups collapsed, I thought Id been saved by some sort of divine timing and didn’t need anyone else because I had her… and she became my whole world. I can see now that that was a fatal mistake and far too much pressure and expectation to place on any one person.

When she ended things at the start of Covid, I found myself truly alone. I had nowhere to go, no one to be with… nothing left except for my work with and so now I made that my whole world instead. And I became more and more depressed, resentful and bitter. Yoga teaching used to be my passion, my purpose…. But now it became a business, a chore. (I’m quitting teaching after this summer - but more on that in future posts)

It took time to rekindle old friendships and build new ones. And the work is still happening. But on days like yesterday where we celebrated a friends birthday and watched the full moon rise over my favourite beach - I consider myself really lucky to have an awesome bunch of friends. And remind myself of how valuable this is, and not to take it for granted ever again.

In September I will shed the title “yoga teacher” which I feel no longer fits, perhaps it never did.

I don’t know what comes next, but with this kind of support I feel comfortable, even excited about not knowing. It’s like taking a night time dive and I can’t see the river beneath.

02/06/2023

Nearly 3 years later I finally made it to Blue Belt in BJJ 🥋👊

It’s been a hell of a journey.. an enormous amount of commitment, perseverance and persistence…. And a lot of fun too. The last few years have been the most challenging of my life, and nothing helped me through the dark days more than this beautiful sport.

I’ve always been slow…. I find that things just don’t come easy to me. Even in Yoga, my teachers say things like “do this technique for a few days and you’ll start to feel the effects” but I have to practice them for a few months before perceiving anything.

On top of that I’m almost always the oldest guy on the mats and I have had my ass kicked so many times it’s hard to imagine!

But something about this beautiful, “gentle” art keeps me coming back.
- Maybe it’s that I can track my progress
- Maybe it’s the renewed confidence in my physical abilities
- Maybe it’s the great friends and cool peeps I’ve met along the way
- Maybe it’s that i feel less injured now than when I used to focus on Vinyasa Yoga (no joke)
- Maybe it’s the mental health benefits I’m getting
- Maybe it’s the way it keeps me humble

I don’t live in one place so whilst I’ve been relentlessly committed, it’s been hard achieving consistency with my training, but it also means I’ve had a lot of great teachers.

If I ever have kids, I will encourage them to start training BJJ at the earliest opportunity.

And if any of you my friends wants to start - give me a shout and we can go to a beginners class together 😊❤️

Huge thank-you to my teachers:
.bjj .theobjj

And also thank you to those who inspired me: