Sitting Is The New Smoking

Dear Yogis

You may have heard the phrase ‘sitting is the new smoking’. People tell us with authority that our hunter-gather ancestors used the body as it was supposed to be used with constant activity, with proper, minimal use of stress and proper time spent resting and digesting.

A dear yogi friend gave me a book: Move Your DNA, Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement by Katy Bowman. She says we can hypothesize on the movement of the ancient tribes based on existing evidence. It demonstrates why we are ill-at-ease in our bodies today.

As a baby, you would have been exercised many times a day and walking and squatting long before the modern toddler. ‘When not play-gathering, you played in constantly varying terrain. This all-day movement... developed the skills, strength, and shape you would eventually need in order to function as an adult, and your gait and walking patterns were much less toddler-like and wobbly because you didn’t wear diapers. Your pelvis and hips took the shape necessary to continue squatting, sitting on the floor, and walking a ton, and were not influenced by... continuous time in a single position. Adults (from fourteen-years-old) walked 3-to-10 miles a day, harvested and carried load, all maximising bone density.

Katy Bowman says the way we move now is so drastically different from our ancestors that even an hour-or-so in the gym, many, many times a week, adds up to almost nothing compared to what the muscles, tissue, fascia and cells were designed for. She asks: ‘For how many hours a week is a chair pressing against your hamstrings? How does this constant pressure affect the blood vessels running down to your feet or the nerves in the pelvis? Have your body’s tissues atrophied to the point that they are no longer able to adapt?

Sitting isn’t the new smoking. It’s the original smoking.

Training

If you haven’t tried Mysore before, consider coming tomorrow, Saturday, to Triyoga Ealing anytime after 7.00. The class finishes at 10.00. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t memorised the sequence yet, Zephyr will help. Newcomers to this system come at 9.00 and people who know the routine come earlier. Think about it; why wouldn’t you get up early on a weekend morning, walk through the cold, wet streets to yoga, spend 90 minutes on your mat and celebrate with a bowl of free gruel afterwards! What fun!

Home Studio

I felt so particularly overjoyed after the classes yesterday: the yoga, the atmosphere, the chatting and joshing, the newcomers, the oldcomers, the effort, the groaning, the older yogis, the foetus, the corpse poses at the end... I’d be lost without you. Book through this website here.

Yoga in the News

This is interesting... NPR has: How 'Namaste' Flew Away From Us. Apparently the use of the word in the US makes US South Asians crazy. The writer explains: “The first part of Namaste, "namaha," means "to bend" or "salutations" or "greetings." The "te" in namaste means "to you." All it means is “hello”. But 'it makes our skin crawl, our face burn and our heart do weird things’ when Western Europeans and North Americans use the word! Who knew!

The Sunday Times has a book review: The Story of Yoga by Alistair Shearer. “Even beyond the baddies, yoga’s journey West gives Shearer a compelling cast of characters. Its proponents included... Mollie Stack, who, living in India before the outbreak of the First World War, noticed that the local women had superior posture to their colonial counterparts. Stack taught a version of yoga when she returned to London and created the Women’s League.”

Enjoy your weekend... if you've done your taxes!

Ants In Your Pants Yin Yoga

Dear Yogis

Last weekend I did a class with top Yin teacher Norman Blair – and bought his book, Brightening Our Inner Skies. Many of the things he says about Yin Yoga can be applied to Ashtanga Yoga. Yoga is all about awareness and meditation, after all. For example, Norman says: “A Yin yoga practice with its emphasis on awareness can build bridges towards meditative practices. Meditation in postures develops confidence about and diminishes fear around meditating. In meditation, there can be glimpses of freedom from being so tightly bound to exhausting wheels of self: that maintaining of the sameness of identity, that maintaining or the masks of personality”.

All yoga is about this, the ‘stilling the fluctuations of the mind’. Norman says that mental distractions (fluctuations) can be put into four groups: Fantasising and being lost in daydreams; judging and commentary from our inner critic; planning and existing in the future; and ruminating like a cow chewing its cud, ‘stuck in a maze of memories, repetitively eating past events’.

We are naturally distracted; the mind dwells in a naturally distracted state. Before we discover yoga practice/meditation we are dwellers in distraction with no tools to disentangle ourselves. Norman tells us this: “Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and an expert in brain disorders, talks about how the mind is full of ants (automatic negative thoughts). He suggests that we become aware of these ants and consciously question them; otherwise they will continue to multiply, thus constructing denser walls of self”.

Ants! Brilliant!

Yoga Retreat

There’s nothing like holding on to the summer warmed by Kytheran sun in September by joining our Magical Kapsali Yoga Retreat. If you’re considering coming, take a look at this example of flights.

Depart: Sunday 13th September – British Airways 06:40LHR, arriving 12:30ATH (£94 today)

Aegean Airlines - 16:10 from Athens, arrives 16:55 Kithira

Return: Saturday 19th September – British Airways 19:55ATH, arriving 21:45LHR (£175 today)

Aegean Airlines - 17:20 leaves Kithira, arrives 18:05 Athens. (€ 84.24 today)

Take a look at different combinations. Easyjet from might be a cheaper way of getting to Athens. And the other carrier from Athens to the island is Sky Express. You can do the whole journey on Aegean but the outgoing journey goes via Germany.

Training

Tonight I’m going to the first of three workshops: ‘Headstand to handstand’ with Anastasis Tzanis. Tonight’s theme is Alignment. In this video Anastasis talks about tonight’s inversions. Next month it will be backbending and March has transitions. All this is at at Triyoga Chelsea, 19:45 - 21:45. Come with me!

Home Studio

The later classes next week are booked up but the earlier classes have plenty of spaces. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please click here to write a small review.

Yoga in the News

Good News Network has: Boy Was Inspired to Become Youngest Yogi in US After Seeing How Yoga Healed Mom. At just 7 years old, this boy was inspired to become the youngest yoga teachers in the United States... Now 14 years old, Tabay Atkins teaches three classes a week and holds seven different yoga teacher certifications.

The Times has: The Story of Yoga by Alistair Shearer review — our flexible friend. “This is a tale of what happens when East and West meet, and about a shift from the sacred to the secular.” “The cultural historian Alistair Shearer argues that while we might have enthusiastically embraced yoga in the West, most of us don’t understand it.”

The Independent scolds: Why you should stop using Instagram for yoga: 'It has been reduced to a show’. The article rather marmishly tells us: ‘Priest is able to pose with her legs behind her head but only because her skeletal structure allows it. “If another person tries the same posture, a person whose hips are built quite differently than mine, well that’s a recipe for injury and disaster,” she adds. “Nobody on Instagram ever tells you not to try this at home, but maybe they should.”  (Did you need telling?)

Don’t forget the eclipse this evening, at its greatest point at 7.10pm! (The January full moon is called the 'Wolf Moon' because wolves howl more in the winter!)

The Yoga of Faliure

Dear Yogis

How’s the New Year Resolution going? Many people don’t like them because they are associated with failure. What a pity, especially as yoga postures teach us a lot about failure and trying again. Almost every posture is like this. There are some postures that feel like a failure for years, decades, and that’s the part of the practice that we learn the most from.

Many business leaders talk about the importance of hardship and failure in their eventual success. Anyone who has experienced tensions over Christmas might reflect that hardship creates self-analysis and we learn about who we are, where our inner strength lies, how we interact with others and how to try to bring balance, or at least employ tactics to bring peace. The consequences of not learning and improving are injurious. We injure ourselves.

There’s a climber called Conrad Anker who talks about climbing in a very yogi way! He says of climbing: ‘you're in a situation where all the consequences of making mistake are injury, so you have to focus on that. And that takes away the noise of day-to-day living in this oversubscribed society we are in, there at the moment. And that to me is my form of meditation’.

The best climbers fail to summit difficult mountains. Some die. Some try again. Anker says: “I have plenty of ‘no successes’ I could look back on, but I don’t want to live life in reverse.”. “We can avoid risk and we just sit on the sofa and watch TV and eat convenience food OR we harness risk. And by understanding that, we can see what risk allows us to do with human potential – both intellectual and physical standpoint – by pushing us out of our comfort zone and having to evaluate the cost benefit that each moment really opens up intellectual curiosity in a way that has allowed humans as a species to progress to the point where we are today.”

It isn’t so much the fear of dying but of not actually living’.

Yoga Retreat

Our Magical Yoga Retreat to the little paradise of Kapsali Bay will be on the third week of September – travel on Sunday the 13th September and back the following weekend. Let me know if you want to come and I’ll start booking rooms and transfers. (See our photo gallery from previous years.)

Training

This Sunday (5th) I’ll be doing ‘A Yin Yoga Workshop: Exploring Inner Landscapes with Norman Blair’ 13.30-16.40 at Indaba in Marylebone. Norman Blair is a top Yin yoga teacher; his teacher training courses for 2020 are already booked up with waiting lists! Fancy coming?

With a triumph of hope over experience I’ve booked three Friday evening inversion workshops with Anastasis Tzanis called ‘headstand to handstand’. The dates are Fri, 10 January (Alignment), Fri, 7 February (backbending) and Fri, 6 March (transitions) at Triyoga Chelsea, 19:45 - 21:45. Come with me! When that’s done it will almost be clocks forward time!

Home Studio

A really sweet thing this season has been the amount of people wanting yoga gift tokens for their partners for a birthday or Christmas present. See attached if you’re still short of a present. Anyway, we’re back to normal next week with classes. There’s plenty of availability; only one class is completely full. See attached for the week’s class availability. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please click here to write a small review.

Yoga in the News

The Telegraph has New Year, New Yoga — take Adam Husler's challenge to go deeper in these 'simple' yoga postures. It’s always time well spent to revisit the postures we think we know well. Goal-setting usually refers to the difficult postures but it’s worth looking at familiar postures for their subtleties.Home Studio

Yogi New Year Resolution 2020

Dear Yogis

Have you got your New Year’s Resolution ready? Yogis are brilliant at resolutions. In every yoga practice we try to be a better version of ourselves. This is truly our time of year.

Yogis have the Sanskrit word ‘Sankalpa’ to describe a resolve from the heart. It’s “an intention that forces your mental energies... towards a specific end”.  It is an aspiration pursued by setting a sincere intention. It’s really not about losing a couple of pounds or going to the gym. It doesn’t care if you give up chocolate. It’s about the authenticity of your life and what change you can make to get closer to your higher self. (Definition of the opposite might help: imagine lack of setting a goal or intention, living with an assortment of aims, confusion, aimlessness... and other terms that sound alarmingly like the higgledy piggledy of daily life.)

A Sankalpa is about creating the life you are meant to have. To find your Sankalpa, imagine the life that you aspire to live and then set your intention. Act as that person and pursue long-term interests rather than short-term, confused desires.

Yoga Retreat

OK. Hands up who resolves to come on our Magical Greek Yoga retreat next September – the third week in September! If you’re stuck for a resolution for New Year’s Eve, a Kapsali Retreat could be just the thing! Let me know. As before, we can get the early flight, 06.40, out from Heathrow on Sunday 13th September 2020 and catch the late flight, 19.55, back from Athens on Saturday 19th. See here. To get to the island, we hook up with the Olympic Airlines fights: 16.10 from Athens and 17.20 return on the Saturday. You could also ch

Home Studio

This coming Monday, the 30th, I’ve added another class at 4.00pm. The 6.00 and 7.30 classes are full. See attached for the week’s class availability. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please click here to write a small review.

I’m also covering a class at Eden at 11.30 on’ Thursday 2nd January 2020. I might wear this, a Christmas present.

Yoga in the News

Telegraph.co.uk has: Midlife Fitness Files: yoga expert Bridget Woods Kramer on fake vegans and the power of ayurveda. She says about her energy secret: “Fresh vegetable juice or standing on my head for 5-10 minutes. You can do it against a wall or get a special headstand stool online or just lie down with a bolster or cushions across your lower back and your legs up the wall.  Going upside down daily is invigorating and relaxing at once and, some say, anti-ageing”

With NY Resolution timing, Psychology Today gives us: The Practice and Habit of Happiness. ‘In short, breaking undesired habits and starting desired habits is hard and usually somewhat unpleasant. So, what if we replaced “discipline” with more “delight” and character development as a motivator?’ Read about how to change the neural pathways in your brain.

Perfecting Generosity

Dear Yogis

‘Twas the week before Christmas and the money raised at our charity class in Decathlon, £120.00, has already been transferred. We were told that the most urgent need is stocks of juices and croissants for the landings – for greeting refugees on the shore. My charity bucket in the studio has £40 more which will go towards postage of the mats. They will be distributed at Vial (the camp) as people use them to sleep on. Perhaps some will make it to the language and learning centre of yoga!

Decathlon staff and security were so sweet to us. They kept the entrance doors on the first floor closed so we wouldn’t be disturbed. They provided water and protein bars. They cordoned off a large space for us (11 yogis) and provided some mats from their example shelf. I’m still collecting spare mats and spare money and I’ll organise another class soon to kick us off on a good 2020 note.

We felt the spirit of the season; it was totally blessed! This really is a blessed time of year, all about the practice of generosity rather than concentrating on our own concerns and ambitions, plans and lists. In Buddhist practice the act of ‘giving’ is called ‘Dana’ and it is in the DNA of practitioners. You don’t go to a monastery or temple without taking your Dana, your offering. It’s as normal as taking shoes off, it’s ubiquitous and unremarkable but you can’t reach buddhahood without perfecting generosity.

So! Happy Christmas! Happy giving!

Home Studio

Classes have finished and I settle down for my long winter nap! My lucky Home Studio becomes a bedroom for guests and is back in service in its rightful role on Monday 30th. One of the classes on the 30th is already full so I’ve added another class at 4.00pm. Then there’s the Ashtanga classes of Thursday 2nd, nothing in between.  And then we’re off into the Roaring Twenties! See attached for class availability. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please click here to write a small review.

Christmas Presents

My final suggestion for a Christmas present is bags from a company called Mimicri. Their website says: ‘We upcycle broken refugee rubber boats into high quality bags. The idea for mimycri was born on the Greek island Chios where the co-founders – Vera and Nora – volunteered several times since 2015 welcoming people arriving at the shores. This experience motivated Vera and Nora to stay engaged and do something.’

Training

Tonight is the Charlie Merton workshop, Winter Solstice Yin Yoga + Gong Experience. If you’re looking for a Christmas present for a yogi, this is not a bad idea..

Yoga in the News

National Geographic has: Why our fast-paced society loves yoga. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, a yoga instructor, Harvard neuroscientist, and expert on the science of yoga, says ‘ Stress plays a major role in many illnesses that kill us. It also drives unhealthy eating, poor sleep, alcohol and drug misuse, and other bad habits. “Modern medicine really sucks at preventing chronic disease’. Khalsa has investigated yoga for insomnia, PTSD, anxiety, and chronic stress, where he’s seen the most compelling evidence of yoga’s benefits.

Forbes has: Julia Roberts' “Eat, Pray, Love” Yoga Teacher Reveals Filming Secrets. ‘With Julia, I would incorporate many inversions and arm balances: Handstands, wall dog, Pincha Mayurasana (forearm stand), and Bakasana (crow). Powerful poses for a powerful woman. FYI: Actors have gruelling hours, so for several weeks of the film they were shooting through the night. She is a dedicated yogi, and we would practice at midnight!’

The Gift Of Giving

Dear Yogis

It’s gift-giving time. Have you got all your presents ready? Gift-giving has always been around; we practice something at Christmas that has happened since prehistoric times. Originally the gods got the goods. Gifts greased the wheels of barter. Rival tribes needed peace offerings. Father Christmas with his gifts is an old pagan idea about spirits who traversed the sky. Ancient Egyptians raised gift-giving to operatic levels – they even filled pyramids with gifts. Ancient Greeks are thought to have started the tradition of birthday gifts to ward off evil spirits and bring good wishes. We have so many occasions that we mark with some kind of offering... Valentines, Harvest Festival, Diwali, simply visiting someone’s home.

Giving is happily in our DNA. We are wired to give! Gifts cement tradition, spread joy, and strengthen social ties. This is a useful reflection if you have someone in your family that is... erm... not your favourite! This is your moment, your welcomed opportunity, to practice generosity! Give with all your heart!

Giving is good for the giver! There’s plenty of research to show that kindness and the act of giving releases endorphins, decreases stress levels, decreases depression and increases in a sense of happiness and purpose. The more you give, the more you become the kind of person who gives, the more you build up your kindness and compassion ‘muscle’ and the more good you do for yourself.

Charity Class

This Sunday. 15th, I’ll be teaching a charity class in Decathlon Ealing. Details are in Last week’s Frfiday Email, here. I would like donated, good quality, yoga mats to send to a charity that works with refugees in Chios, Greece. The Facebook event page is here. My website has a dedicated page here. Sign up here. Or just come along with your mat ready for 11.00. I’ll have charity buckets on the day to collect donations.

Home Studio

My lucky home studio has a variety of classes and people with a variety of reasons for coming. They bring friends, family or just come for the ‘Me Time’. This week I taught an Introduction to Yoga private class for a birthday surprise gift! What a joyful thing! Balloons, Bunting and Breathing. If you’re interested in a birthday session, pop me a line. In the meantime, there’s plenty of room next week. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please write a small review.

Christmas Presents

A couple more ideas here... For coffee lovers, two Home Studio yogis have a coffee business, 106 Coffee and they have a £21.00 Christmas gift pack offer. (Pattabhi Jois, said No Coffee No Prana!). Their pack includes100g samples of the following coffees: Portal da Serra from Brazil, Gitwe #832 from Rwanda, La Independencia #1 from El Salvador, and AA Maganjo from Kenya. And if you think a No Coffee No Prana T-shirt would help on the mat, here it is.

Yoga in the News

Bikram is back! The Telegraph has Yoga's dirty secret: how Bikram conned the world. An attendee at a Bikram camp said ‘’Bikram was almost a caricature of himself. He was constantly talking about what had happened to him, that he’d been wronged and that he was innocent. He was still giving his long lectures, saying that he should’ve been revered more than Jesus Christ because he’s helped more people. He sounded delusional.”

Science Daily has: Experts review evidence yoga is good for the brain. ‘The amygdala, a brain structure that contributes to emotional regulation, tends to be larger in yoga practitioners than in their peers who do not practice yoga.’