BWY500hr Yoga Teacher · 680hr Yoga Therapist (2024-2026) · 1st class BA (hons) Fine Art Painting
14/01/2026
Today looks like..
I just thought I’d try and heat up this little mochi - think I might have left it for too long in the microwave!
I’ve been collating the numbers of men to women in classes and have noted in the past 6 months..
Sunday morning classes Mindfulness & Hatha are sometimes 50/50 men to women! Hurray! Definitely noticeable around Christmas and new year
Monday evening nil men, never has there been a male attendee in 5 years of running this session
Wednesday morning - regulars that identify as male (mixing up the terminology here) AMAB? But mainly AFAB
Wednesday corporate class 50/50 men to women whoop whoop 🙌
Friday morning features male regulars and there is space for this to be a 50/50 split!
University class variable/mixed, will be starting new term at Downing next week and at Fitzwilliam college soon
Now we need to work on diversity! Just putting this out here, I genuinely welcome everyone 🏳️🌈
Flat mochi’s welcome to try class
13/01/2026
Treating this is an opportunity to gain a little bit of insight..
Would you be interested in going on retreat to Cornwall for 3 nights October with me to a very well respected and appreciated space that housed Katherine May’s recent writers retreat!!
The yoga space is in a medieval chapel!
The land is private and has access to water and a sauna!
The cost and therefore outgoings are fairly high, due to the retreat centre being excellent and having everything you could possibly envisage! A really special place where we’d be truly looked after, by a professional team, in a county that I have very strong ties & roots with
The theme of the retreat would be inspired by cultivating radical presence and tenderness as well as Yoga as a process of social activism inspired by the book above and many others, including Donna Haraway
I’d want to add that it would be a creative space to explore potential of surrender and attending to the NOW via practices that instil fortitude and replenishment
It would be a huge leap into the unknown for me, and so I’d be grateful for some feedback to whether it would be of interest
I’d want to be able to ensure 8 places + were taken in advance to make it viable
Possible dates:
Saturday 10th October - Tuesday 13th October
Thursday 22nd - Sunday 26th October
Investment £800
Feel free to PM me
08/01/2026
To surrender, often seems completely impossible!
Tension, in the shoulders, jaw & neck is endemic in our society
As is the fear response and distrust (and perhaps rightly so - the world is triggering to say the least if you listen to the news)
In Yoga, we call these knots of energetic tension as granthi’s
In all Yoking Is Yoga sessions practice is offered that genuinely offers an opportunity to dissolve some of that gristly tension in the body mind
With the acknowledgement that how you hold space is felt by others
If your struggling atm it might be that your picking up on the dissonance
Let’s cultivate safety, authenticity and coherence together on the mat
Sessions on Fridays (in person)
RESET
9:45-10:45am
Starts back 23rd January for a 4 week block (drop-ins available)
These sessions are in the sanctuary of a private studio in Haslingfield, Cambridge
06/01/2026
❄️ RE-entry ❄️
What a gift the weather has brought to focus attention
To present moment awareness
Where is your mind spending most of its time?
95% of the time it’s likely to be in the past or future thinking
Planning, ruminating, judging..
This is certainly the case when we perceive comfort
Not that comfort is necessarily a bad thing, nor is the ability to plan but we spend a huge amount of time in thoughts of the future and past
And not in the NOW
‘I’ve had a lot of problems in my life, and most of them never happened’ Mark Twain
The practice of Yoga, brings me to this moment
Assisted by cold immersion
With each breath,
Immersed in the momentary strong sensation of freezing cold water
The sensation of cold simply forces us to become present
~
How is your re-entry into the year going?
I hope you are enjoying each moment for what it brings without too much resistance
NB
Please don't try cold water immersion alone without preparation, safety first, you'll see I'm talking with someone here acting as lifeguard to make sure I'm still able to talk and string sentences together, as it is very likely that someone new to cold water will not be able to read the signs to exit the water effectively - leading to cold water drop where the cooling from extremities to the core carries on 30mins or so after exit (so you don't want to get to a point with which you are shivering in the water!) and/or hypothermia
Bookings now open for offerings, classes and Valentines weekend workshop Jan/Feb 2026
04/01/2026
The year according to the Gregorian calendar suggests linear progression
But we move in cycles
Seasonal, cyclical, spiralic 🌀
There are no straight lines in nature
Fractals, yes, cycles, spirals.. circles, doughnuts (in space)
Straight lines are a human psychological construct
Both our movement patterns and psychological experience are in circles
My thesis was about perspective
All things are about perspective, especially at this time of year
The numbers of the calender are not reflected in nature
And you do not need to feel limited by the imposition of linear form
Someone asked me about progression in Yoga at a Christmas party, and I was struck by the misunderstanding that lay at the foundation of this question
As it focuses on the physical and not on what I'd argue as the internal progression at the heart of Yoga
All things physical are but a vessel, a container, for inner experience
And the progression, that's an internal journeying,
And by using language of linear form, is perhaps a trap
A new course starts next week, Monday evening online
Full moon 🌕
+ an extraordinarly rare blizzard on Dunwich beach!! ❄️
SOMATIC SEA SAUNA to welcome in 2026
The weather today really didn't disappoint
Almost turned into a snowman on standing still ☃️
A complete white out
To honour the indifference and voracity of the sea with the recent deaths, we respectfully crouched to get shoulders under rather than commit to the waves (which were comparatively gentle for the North sea)
Thanks to for a toasty 100degrees to offer the full contrast therapy experience 🔥
26/12/2025
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The colour and stillness
Of a found world.
For light
John O’Donohue
Wishing you a lovely little Restmas
19/12/2025
The space in-between
We honour this space everything we bow to one another
Gratitude for the receptivity, the warm sparkles & smiles
When the armouring drops, we are left with an opening
An invitation to be at ease
That’s the why, what, who and where of this Yoking Is Yoga
Sending you all love on this new moon 🌑
Last session before Christmas for me will be on Sunday 21st December, on the Winter solstice, at Satyam Well-being in Cambridge
As the cycles turn, so do we
🌀
15/12/2025
2026
Just coming to the end of facilitating the last of the EMBODIED CHAKRA online course this evening, with a wonderful community who practice together Monday evenings, consistently for the past 5 years
We will come together again, for some explorations ~ this time around the Yamas, January 12th onwards..
Additional thanks to all those who joined RESTmas workshop last Saturday ~
‘I completely loved the workshop. It be stilled my busy mind and I felt completely calm. I've been powering through the last few months, so to pause and find quiet and stillness was just what I needed. Brilliant - thank you for running it. If you do another, I'm there!’
‘Such a beautiful session on Saturday. I was in bed and asleep 😴 by 9pm. Unheard of usually. Love this poem ❤️ Thank you so much for your ability to keep everything fresh and deeply meaningful. So appreciated and I enjoy every moment.’
‘thank you again for such a lovely afternoon! I thought it was a really good session - I did some stretching that I had not successfully done in a very long time! And I didn’t get cramps in my arches which so often give me gip! Add the quiet moments which were delightful and it was a total success in my book!’
Yes to February 14th, Saturday 💕
Workshop based around the heart centre (anahata) & thoracic spine
Spinal release, shoulders, whole ~ heart🫀centred practice
Bookings on the website
X
13/12/2025
New arrivals..
Christmas has come early
Additional props, weighted sandbags!!
For RESTmas this afternoon
Setting the right intention for the festive period
09/12/2025
Pacing..
One of those days
Knuckling down at home, on this grey day
My daughter and I are resting at home, glad I’m not teaching today, as I will be tomorrow, Friday, Saturday & Sunday
I’ve got over my hump around the commodification of Christmas, I will not fall for the nonsense but it still rightly grinds as a feeling of ‘not good enough’
Kids might be interested in presents but really all the want is our PRESENCE
Lemon, ginger & honey tea 🫚🍋🍯
With additional chilli, cinnamon and turmeric (which my daughter rightly states is anti inflammatory)
Budding nutritionist that she is with her short bowel syndrome
Remember, mantra for this season might be
Kids might be conditioned to want presents but what they really want is our PRESENCE
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Yoking is yoga is a non-competitive & safe environment for you to explore your body and mind.
I discovered yoga before I knew what 'yoga' was. Like most children do, exploring and experimenting with my body, creating shapes and moving to rhythms, how the extension and retention of the breath in swimming created a sense of meditative awareness. There were headstands in the school field, dancing, spinning like a whirling dervish to recreate the sense of expansive freedom of being stood on a cliff. Many experiential unpretentious moments that are seed like. Having been first taught Vrkasana (tree) outside a barn in Norfolk aged 12, and my first yoga class in a gym 2 years later, I distinctly remember the sense of relief and wonder at how good it felt, what a revelation it was, to do yoga. It was in London post painting degree in Brighton that really signed and sealed my interest in the relationship between the self and other, coming to non-dualism via the meditative experience of having an art practice, which brought me to a more serious involvement into the realms of Yoga asana and philosophy. It turns out I was painting what the medieval yogic literature calls ‘Lingams’.
The science & philosophies that branch off from the ever multitudinous Yoga (meaning 'to yoke' or 'to yield'), not just within the practice of asana but in all relationships, is a daily practice.
Inspired by recent talks by Peter Blackaby, Alistair Shearer and intensive training with Donna Farhi (Wolfson College, Cambridge June 2018), I have completed a 3 year long 500hr training with BWY for the level 4 Diploma qualification, and have held first aid certification and insurance to teach for over 18 months now - where I have taught regular classes until the recent lockdown. As a regular practitioner of yoga since age 18 (15 years ago), I hope (on a novel note) to take the headstand into my 80/90's if my body allows for it! However, yoga is much more than a mere headstand, it is an approach, an attitude. And, always, an ongoing process.. it’s not just a physical practice.
" Yoga can help us act with understanding and self-awareness, to become mature in the full sense of the word. it is a positive force in a world that struggles to accommodate change." (Peter Blackaby)
