Dear Yogis!

I mention Uddiyana Bandha (drawing the navel in) a lot in class, increasingly aware that my belly is less and less toned as the lock-down months continue! Uddiyana Bandha in Ashtanga is used throughout the practice which isn’t easy. However, some movements of the practice help to remind us of the abs and to tone the belly. For example, lifting half-way up from a forward fold can only have one purpose, that of drawing in the abdomen and creating that cavity in the belly.

Monday June 21st is International Yoga Day. It came after a speech at the UN by Indian PM Narendra Modi in 2014. In that speech, and in subsequent speeches to mark the day, you can see the political hopes that yoga will help tackle issues of the world... issues being tackled by the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations! Well, they would say that!

I’m reading a book about the breath. Not an unusual thing for a yoga teacher… but this isn’t a humourless pranayama book. The author, Oliver James is a ‘breath expert and body-led psychotherapist’ who has studied all kinds of ‘schools of breath’: “Holotropic Breath; Transformational Breath; Quantum Light Breath; Shamanic Breath; Wim Hof Method”… an expanding list of breath expertise.

I was asked this week for a good book to read as an introduction to yoga. Some of us are happy to turn up and do the class. Some of us want to dive into the deep end, right from the start, and read up on history, philosophy and all sorts. I have many books that promise to be a good introduction. Here’s my recommendation… and it’s Iyengar Yoga that wins!