Easter Yoga: Death and Resurrection

Happy Easter! The traditional story of death and resurrection is taking on a metaphorical meaning for our culture and society, eh! Many people contemplate the rebirth that’s coming. Will we keep some of the gains of lock-down? For example, did you hear the loud and proud dawn chorus? Some of us are dealing with tough times. Some of us are bored. Some of us are really quite pleased with the lock-down. Does yoga help?

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A Whole New World Of Yoga Practice

Unexpected side-effects of the lock-down... Are you saving water on the showering and spending it all on the hand-washing? Are you hands dry and splitting yet?! Are you finally eating the forgotten things in the freezer? And are you enjoying yoga online more than you could have ever imagined? There’s no travelling, no tackling transport, no rushing to class and rushing home. New problems to do with camera angles, audio, and cats and dogs joining the class have taken us into a whole new world of yoga practice.

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Yoga In Challenging Times

Whaddaya know! It’s Friday the 13th. Make it lucky! Week after week I ask gym-going yogis to use their own yoga mat. Week after week people don’t! Now that we have the ‘worst health crisis for a generation’, says the PM, and ‘many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time’, please use your own mat! I don’t want to lose my loved ones. This borough, Ealing, has five confirmed cases of Coronavirus sufferers. They will have infected others. Who knows if they were on that mat before you!

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Tree Pose In Spring

Cherry blossom is peeping through. ‘Meteorological winter’ is coming to an end. Lent began this week (and ends 9th April) and, along with the beginning of Spring, this feels like a better time to make New Year Resolutions than after Christmas chaos. This is a natural time of renewal after the darkness of winter. Yoga, and many eastern philosophies, reminds us that we belong to the natural cycle of birth and death and, crucially, rebirth.

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The Great Night Of Shiva. Lord Of Yogis

Today is Lord Shiva’s Day – the lord of yogis and the first yoga guru! This evening will see huge celebrations in India. The celebrations are called Maha Shivaratri, the Great Night of Shiva, to mark ‘overcoming darkness and ignorance’. Lord Shiva is known as the destroyer; he destroys illusion. He teaches us that everything is constantly changing.

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Yoga and Glimpses of Great Love

Happy Valentine’s Day Evening! Here's my attempt at a Valentine's Yoga Email. I found this beautiful quote to help me along: ‘the yogic view is that all of our experiences of human love are actually glimpses of the Great Love’. It’s from a Yoga Journal article about love which says there are three spiritual levels of love: absolute Love, personal/individual love, love-as-practice.

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