I started yoga at 17 because I was obsessed with exercise and the Power Yoga VHS I used pushed me hard and kept me out of my body.  I exerci

Depending on my environment, who is around me and what is happening I can show up gregarious, defiant and rebellious or muted, meek and reserved and everything in between. The polarity expressions are my coping strategies for the freedoms that have been taken away from me. One is preventative, fiery and proactive, the other protective self-preservation. Right in the middle of these two versions of me, neither too far one way or the other, is how I show up when I feel safe, wh

Thinking is becoming a lost art, not just worrying, planning, remembering, judging and all of the usual mind fluctuations we cram into the b

As a women’s yoga teacher with a love of all things lunar I often get pigeonholed into the calm, quiet and restful category. I have also to

Menstrual cycle awareness has quite literally saved my life. Despite experiencing crushing lows, debilitating pain and extreme uncontrolled rage for much of my bleeding life from menarche at 11 through to learning how to cooperate with my cycle at 29, I consistently turned down medical intervention. Maybe I’m a masochist but I felt that the pain and rage were happening for a reason and I didn’t feel that numbing it out was going to help me move through it. I had tracked my cy

Yesterday was a real challenge. I was feeling hardened, cold, stuck, rigid and shut down. Deeply engrained coping strategies that were once useful for survival that are now hugely restrictive. But the world keeps turning so we (Hope In High Water) had a show to play in Hastings. So I had to go out into the desert of my soul on stage. ‘All things are illuminated in the desert. The light scours all. There is nowhere to hide. In the desert we get clear on what really matters to

It’s dusk and I am standing at the edge of a beautiful tarn, behind me rolling hills in front of me expansive forest. I am in one of the mos

Futility is an incredibly powerful sedative and something we can feel when decisions are made unjustly. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the power of nature, to know that Mother Earth has got our back. Tomorrow the moon will be the closest it has been to earth in 70 years. For us a rare occurrence, for the moon just a regular part of her long and flowing cycle. The moon has watched over earth for over 4.5 billion years and in that time she has seen species come and go, lan

Water is an incredible element from which we can learn so much! It has a depth that goes far beyond its shimmering surface and it is receptive, parting to allow anything to enter before gracefully resuming its undisturbed surface. Water receives change so easily and continues to flow even under pressure, all while never losing its grace, fluidity and flow. Water is powerful without needing to be hard. If you were to hit a rock with a hammer, the rock would chip piece by piece

So today is the International Day of Yoga. I thought it would be nice to share a little of how and why I practice. Yoga has not just transformed my life, it has given me a reason to live. Before discovering yoga I often felt lost, purposeless, easily knocked and lacking in confidence in every area of my life. I have been practicing yoga on and off for 11 years and can still remember the absolute magical moment when I first 'got it'. My breath and movement were one, my mind wa

One day my Dad sat my siblings and I down and asked us to write out a list of all of the things we felt we couldn’t do. He then took our lists to the bottom of the garden with a spade, dug a whole in the ground and buried our ‘I can’ts’ in there. He proceeded to conduct a funeral service to the word I can’t and then banned us from using the words ever again. Trivial yes but incredibly important and symbolic for a young child and in fact adults alike. It’s so easy for us to ge

'Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.' - Arthur Helps Feet are the principal foundation for all standing poses and active in all inversions and arm balances, most backbends and forward bends, many twists and hip openers. They allow us to stand, walk, run, jump and generally have mobility in life. They are our wheels, yet we probably give more care and attentio

'Drowning in the sea of tears you're crying, are you worried that you're happier at war than at peace' - John Moreland One of the strangest things I have come to realise is how attached we are as humans to our misery. We hang on to what has been done to us, to those who have hurt us, to the conditions we have been diagnosed with. We build a very distinct and rigid sense of self around these labels, which restricts us more than we realise. Our language even reinforces this att

When it comes down to it, connection is what we are all looking for. Connection is our driving force and our ultimate goal, yet we continually block our access to this blissful state of being choosing instead to barricade ourselves into our emotional forts, drawing up the drawbridge to true, authentic connection when things get rocky. It’s difficult to put the feeling of connection into words but it is a feeling with the power to completely transform our lives. Often we feel

Isn’t it funny how life often sends us just the messages we need, exactly when we need them. This month life sent me one of the most important and life changing messages yet. Each month I try to set myself a sadhana project to help me to stay focused on my growth as a human and as a yoga teacher. A sadhana project is a project for spiritual growth, a kind of intention, often set at the start of a new moon cycle, to be incorporated into all areas of life for the duration of th