When attending yoga, you might choose to go to a class in a yoga studio, a gym, or a community-driven class in a church hall or similar. But what if you’re finding a particular pose hard, and you can’t catch the teacher afterwards, or you’re not getting what you need from those gym classes, you might like to consider hitting someone you like up for a private sesh.
When practicing yoga, you may have been guided to micro-bend your knees or elbows, in order to avoid hyper-extending (or ‘locking’) into the joint. But what does this actually mean?
Knee pain is a common complaint in yoga classes and beyond, but you might be surprised to discover that quite often, the culprit is, in fact, not the knees at all, but instead, your hips and your bum.
I just wanted to talk a bit about downward-facing dog, because, well, it's a really hard yoga pose, and one of the most well-known out there. If I had a pound for every time someone told me they couldn't stay in it, or that they'd left a yoga class after the teacher harassed them for not being able to do so, I'd be... well, not rich, but I could buy a Nandos?
Power imbalance between teacher and student, whatever the discipline, is real and complex, affecting boundaries inside and outside of class. It’s time we considered how this imbalance affects us as teachers and as students; what impact it has on our consent practices, our use of touch, our interactions and the respect we have - or don’t - for each other.
Last week I was privileged enough to spend some time at the Brighton Yoga Festival, organised by the Brighton Yoga Foundation. Chaired by Theo Wildcroft and Jacqueline Hargreaves, the panel hosted Jubilee Cooke and Karen Rain, who had both flown over from the States specially, and Josna Pankhania, who had flown over from Australia.
