Oxford Hatha Yoga

15/10/2025

It's great to catch up with fellow yoga teachers and swap ideas, share experiences and uplift each other. Such a treat to share meditation with fellow yoga souls. As a teacher being gifted a savasana is a sweet spot to receive rather than give. Plus a good chatter saves our friends and families from hearing our yoga stuff yet again...

My pleasure to organise this meet up in my volunteer role with the British Wheel of Yoga. All teachers, student teachers and foundation course most welcome. Come along, you don't need to be a BWY member. The Old School Hall Cumnor is just outside the Oxford Ringroad and buses from the Oxford station, Abingdon and Wantage. Just £5, come along and share, I will pop booking link into comments.

BWY in the South
thank to Tiziano Casalta for great hands photo with dreamstime

10/10/2025

The Autumn colours are getting into full swing in Old Headington. Warming sun welcoming us to yoga this morning on Dunstan road. A great uplift as we think of mental health. Take a big breath and sigh away whatever you are ready to release. Turn your face to the sunshine and absorb those uplifting rays.

08/10/2025

So What is your hobby? Does it give you a completely different mind set or simply some headspace to let go of the everyday? Mine is Pottery and I have just loved challenging myself to the new skills needed to Wheel throw. How to master a slimy wet wobblily clay lump into a pleasing shape. Then drying and get it through the firing process, with successful colour of glazes but also functional so holding tea or morning!

It is a form of for me, often much easier to completely switch off and find yourself totally absorbed in the moment. My hobby is slowly morphing into more of side hustle, so do pop along to the Shop - Sandford on Thames and browse my stall at the craft fair on Saturday 25 October. It is always such a honour when someone finds the pot for them. Also helps letting go if know my creations however humble are finding their new home!

👣

06/10/2025

Three fun things you might not know about me?
One is that I only got my heels to the floor squatting low in the last couple of years… decades of struggling to get down & comfy

So fact 2: I now really appreciate squatting as building a house been very useful to protect back as lifting, shifting heavy materials, painting and miles of cleaning! I’m building, or in truth slightly assisting, my other half to create our final home that’s as eco as we can make it!
Third fact: I’m enjoying my first love of pottery but taken up new skill slowly mastering throwing on the wheel!

04/10/2025

Thankyou to CAG Oxfordshire and the International Tree Foundation for having this great initiative to ensure our future generations have trees. The green lungs of our county!

🌳🌲🌳🌲 FREE TREES!! 🌲🌳🌲🌳

➡️ https://www.internationaltreefoundation.org/garden-tree-giveaway

It’s back! FREE trees available for your garden – whatever the size! CAG Oxfordshire and the International Tree Foundation are giving away trees to Oxfordshire residents for their gardens.

All the trees are native to the UK. You can choose up to two trees:

🌳 Spindle
🌳Wayfaring tree
🌳 Guelder rose
🌳Crab apple
🌳Rowan, also known as mountain ash
🌳Hazel

Spindle, wayfaring tree and guelder rose are best for smaller gardens, whilst crab apple, rowan (mountain ash), and hazel are all great options for a medium garden. Larger gardens offer you the chance to plant a good mixture of trees.

Trees will be available for collection from local distributors from Thursday 27th November and Sunday 30th November. When you collect your tree you will also receive a tree planting guide too.

Applications opened today and they are allocated on a first come first served basis so be quick!

03/10/2025

Happy Friday and Happy World Smile Day. I had to buy this daft moustache as simply made me giggle. I love that our yoga classes are more often filled with smiles and laughter. Also quite a few frowns of concentration, especially in balances or trying something new.

What the statistics tell us on average
😊 A small smile generally uses 10 muscles
🙁 a small frown uses 6
😃 a smile uses 12
🥺a frown uses 11

Let’s all flex those smile muscles and see how far the smiles can be shared. Could be a wonderful contagion across our globe today!

PS the wooden moustache has been upcycled to be a pottery sponge on a stick, really helpful once cut down.

😎

02/10/2025

Deep respect and appreciation for one of the planets protectors of our precious wild.
Enjoy the lightness of pure spirit, thank you

With Dr. Jane Goodall’s passing, the world has lost a giant. At 91, the legendary defender of animals and the planet has left us. Rest gently, Jane.

Her life was not only a triumph of science but of conscience. From the forests of Gombe, Tanzania, she shattered old ideas and revealed a truth that changed us forever: chimpanzees love, mourn, build bonds, and even craft tools. In unveiling their lives, she reshaped our understanding of what it means to be human.

But Jane’s vision reached far beyond the forest. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute, launched Roots & Shoots to spark hope in young people worldwide, and became an unrelenting voice for climate justice, animal rights, and a more equitable Earth.

Everywhere she went, she carried an unshakable faith: that compassion must become action, that the voiceless must have champions, and that even in the darkest times, hope is a force we can wield for change.

Rest in power, Dr. Goodall. Your courage lives on within us — and your spirit will forever light the way forward.

30/09/2025

What a treat to be given homemade chutney! Just have to practise my patience as needs another couple of weeks to mature, Karen having made it a couple of weeks ago.

I am so happy back teaching and appreciating the great folk that attend my yoga classes. I am definitely in my skill set and my happy place. As wonderful as it can to be helping build a house ...my transferable skills to building trade are pretty much limited to cleaning, shifting stuff, and clearing debris. I caught up with all the painting over the summer. At least a house of walls done, as cutting in seems to challenge my hand dexterity too. Power tools like routing door hinges or sharp chisels for key holes would spoil the wood or leave me injured if not serious lose of humour. I will step up and learn to wall paper as minimal injury risk.

Are there jobs you know are outside your skill set or frankly scare you to try? I love learning as a yoga teacher and sharing that knowledge and creating a comfortable friendly place for everyone to find their happy or simply their 'me time'.

28/09/2025

Hmm 🤔 I can be very guilty of partly listening. Mindfulness enhances all we do and our kindness to others to really listen, hearing with compassion and empathy

28/09/2025

Do ask that question when something doesn’t make sense, or just not heard the whole instruction in yoga class! Truth is several folk are pondering the same dilemma, so you’ll help everyone out by asking. A juicy question often prompts me or your teacher to pull the best explanation as have to be creative and quick to reply!

It could be you unpick a big conundrum. Yoga poses often have different names and a multitude of interpretations. The nub of the answer is getting across the feel, a quality or the intention to what we are trying to achieve. Often an outcome is to reduce or simplify, so to make a posture work for you, at this moment in time.

When time to research a question, we can find the answer in the traditional texts, my current favourite being:
"Asana [poses/yoga] is mastered when effort becomes effortless
and the Infinite being within is reached" Patanjali II 46 & 47
SO What is your Stupid Question for Yoga today?