Introduction I have been teaching my own yoga classes for a year now, and it feels like the right moment to pause and reflect on what that year has taught me—and how it has changed me as both a teacher and a student of yoga. If you’re exploring yoga classes in Ringwood in the New Forest, or just beginning your yoga journey, this reflection might offer a small insight into me and my approach to yoga. Finding My Yoga Community I have practiced yoga for many years, but I never felt like I had...

The autonomic nervous system regulates functions that happen automatically — heart rate, digestion, blood pressure, sweating, and even the size of our pupils. These are not things we can consciously switch on or off in the same way we can decide to move an arm or take a step. What we can do, however, is influence the nervous system indirectly — particularly through breath, movement, and meditation. When we slow and steady the breath, move with awareness, or give the body time to rest, the...

If you were to envisage yoga as a pie, modern yoga as it is commonly practised in the Western world would see the vast majority of that pie taken up by yoga postures ( āsanas ) and some breathwork ( prāṇāyāma ), with only a tiny sliver devoted to meditation or yoga philosophy. Yet when we look back to the roots of yoga, the earliest descriptions define yoga not as a physical practice, but as the stilling of the mind: Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ ( Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra , 1.2) In this...