Yoga: The importance of stillness

Category : Asanas (Postures), General advice, Philosophy 9th September 2019

Inside Yoga 277 (9/9/2019) Yoga can be appear to be many things to many people with so many interpretations of what kind of yoga practice a person can practice creating a picture that can appear complex and confusing. In order to simplify the main objective of yoga there is one word – stillness. At the heart of any yoga practice […]

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Is yoga meant to be relaxing?

Category : General advice, Philosophy 15th July 2019

Inside Yoga 275 (15/7/2019) Spoiler alert: the answer to the question, is yoga meant to be relaxing?, is both yes and no, because as we find in life most questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, and in particular, this question is asking what is the purpose not what do we think we are going to get […]

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Birthdays and why they’re special

Category : General advice, Philosophy 1st July 2019

Inside Yoga 274 (1/7/2019) I have just emerged from a busy weekend celebrating my wife’s birthday – a significant one with a 0! – and as I sit here thinking what do I write about? It is clear: write about birthdays and why they are special. Consider this: a birthday is how we mark a special point in time. It […]

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Detachment helps us cope with sickness

Category : General advice, Philosophy 20th May 2019

Inside Yoga 269 (20/5/2019) No one likes being ill? Some of us cope with it better than others, and of course, it depends on why we are sick, because the common cold is not as bad as a life threatening disease, but detachment as an approach to our health can help us cope with whatever seeks to strike us down. […]

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Obstacles to yoga practice

Category : Asanas (Postures), General advice, Philosophy 13th May 2019

Inside Yoga 268 (13/5/2019) We might think that the greatest obstacle to our yoga practice is our body, because we do not feel flexible enough or strong enough, but the biggest challenge to practice is our mind. In our yoga practice being flexible or strong enough is not a requirement of practice, nor is it the main goal of yoga, […]

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Practice, patience and perseverance

Category : Asanas (Postures), General advice, Philosophy 6th May 2019

Inside Yoga 267 (7/5/2019) WE are often told things take time, to which we nod knowingly but then we carry on being impatient and hurried. The original yoga sutras by Patanjali are clear: we need to maintain a yoga practice over time to perfect it. None of the instant guarantees we see advertised in our modern impatient world, but a […]

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Do we need to get anywhere?

Category : Asanas (Postures), General advice, Philosophy 25th March 2019

Inside Yoga 265 (25/3/2019) One of the goals people set with their meditation, yoga, or similar practices is the wish to find a place that is happy, peaceful or simply perfect. Yet we soon learn that the practice teaches us not to go anywhere but to remove what we do not need in our life, leaving behind something that could […]

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Seeking perfection in practice

Category : Asanas (Postures), Philosophy 11th February 2019

Inside Yoga 260 (11/2/2019) In the source yoga texts written by Patanjali he describes what we seek through our practice of yoga asanas (physical exercises) in terms of two qualities: alertness and relaxation. The sutra (2.46) states that “asana must have the dual qualities of alertness and relaxation”, according to TKV Desikachar, or according to BKS Iyengar, “Asana is perfect […]

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Paying attention and why it’s important

Category : General advice, Philosophy 4th February 2019

Inside Yoga 259 (4/2/2019) Are you paying attention? Then I will begin. Yoga is that simple. It asks us to pay attention in order to train our mind to focus and avoid distraction, yet we often slip into a distracted state of mind and spend so much time there we might think that is our normal state of mind. In […]

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Have a look inside

Category : General advice, Philosophy 28th January 2019

Inside Yoga 258 (28/1/2019) Anyone who has attended a yoga class is familiar with being told to look within, but how many of us understand why looking within is important. After all there is so much around us, we might feel we haven’t time to look inside, or feel it’s a bit egotistical to navel gaze. One of the guidelines […]

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