It was early in May when I finally succumbed to the allure of ‘Zoe zeal’ radiating from the Gremlin. For months, I’d been daily spectator to his studious recording in the Zoe app of every last morsel eaten. I’d grown used to the weekly game of ‘What did he buy at market today?’ Accustomed to…
Death and taxes
There are few things certain in life ‘except death and taxes’, as Benjamin Franklin famously observed in 1789. Let me add to that ‘the inevitable need to navigate the household insurance maze’ and ‘the pain of persuading the TV licensing authorities that no, your mother-in-law really doesn’t need a license because she left this earth…
Counting steps and watching seagulls
His is blue. Mine is pink. Natch. His loiters in his trousers, silently brooding. Ready for action whenever the moment might present — at which point, activity is energetic and generally sweaty. Whereas mine hums quietly away — no rush, after all — clipped to a bra strap or tucked into a waistband. For we…
They think it’s all over…
It WAS over, apparently, Covid. Trampled under the weight of the Russian war machine, as if each new threat to human existence neatly and conveniently cancels out the one before. As if we can’t possibly have compassion for a country being systematically reduced to rubble, its people zapped into oblivion like so many video avatars,…
Words matter. And never more so than in a yoga sales pitch
We were discussing Tadasana, also known as ‘Mountain Pose’ — admittedly at long distance and not even in real time, so my correspondent’s response was somewhat delayed in landing at my door and it took a while to register: ‘Tadasana is neither a dynamic pose nor a balancing pose’. Written thus, almost begging that final…
Stage fright and the yoga teacher? Surely not?
It’s been two years since I took my first trembling steps towards teaching yoga (initially the ‘restorative’ variety), eight months since I qualified as a yin teacher, four months since that hard-earned 200-hour certificate landed in the inbox and eight or nine weeks since I started teaching actual people rather than their mic-muted rectangles, and…
Ah yes, I remember it well…
It’s been two years since we last holidayed in Vass, a place that has been our spiritual summer ‘home from home’ on the island of Levkas for some eight years now. Nestling in a very windy corner of the Ionian sea to the west of the Greek mainland, it’s a haven for windsurfers and sailors…
Buttering toast and learning to fly: Yoga Teacher Training in the time of Covid
Yoga teacher training in the time of Covid. Two hundred hours — stretched over eighteen tortuous months — of sometimes not quite knowing what I was still doing there, why I was hanging on in when family, friends, my own yoga teachers, trusted therapists and usually-reliable guts were telling me to walk away. Two hundred…
Introducing the lesser known Flamingo (yoga pose extraordinaire)
So what do YOU do every night before climbing into bed? And bear in mind this is a family show. Me, I stand on one leg at the end of the bed, the other knee bent up at right angles, shin and foot dangling, hands crossed shoulder to shoulder, and I close my eyes and…
Zooming in and breathing deep on yoga teacher training
Yoga teacher training in lockdown. Not exactly the experience I signed up for, back in that other life, eight long months ago, before Covid-19 knocked us all off-balance – but, honestly, so much better for it. I mean, what better opportunity to test your yoga-chops than through this ultimate challenge to inner spirit? What better…
Getting my head round Hatha
‘Slowly swallow a wet cloth which is four fingers wide and fifteen hands long in the manner instructed by one’s guru’, then ‘draw it out again’. Thus writes Brain Dana Akers in his English translation of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. (Chapter two, Verse 24, if you really don’t want to take my word for it.)…
Alpine skiing and yoga. Chalk and cheese, right?
Well, I’d beg to differ. Okay, one has you hurtling downhill at speed, in minus temperatures, adrenalin pumping, the other hanging out on a mat in relative warmth (village halls in winter and draughty gymnasiums notwithstanding). But there’s so much in common too, if you want to do either well. And feel the benefit. The…
Hackette on the How 