Yoga is a practice of moving, breathing and offering attention. This practice is somatic, meaning that when we do it, we orient towards our internal experience of our body. The physical postures provide a scaffolding, but they are not themselves the yoga; yoga arises in the process of engaging mindfully with our inner experience as we encounter the scaffolding. In other words, we notice what’s happening as we move through the postures, being aware of sensations, emotions, thoughts, energy moving, memories arising ... and, just noticing, let them be.

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Our ability as yoga practitioners is marked not by whether we can sit in Lotus position or stand on our head for ten minutes, although working towards these things may be part of the scaffolding, but by our capacity for engaging with our experience kindly and steadfastly. While yoga offers benefits in terms of health and fitness, most practitioners quickly notice there is also something bigger, deeper and more mysterious going on. Over time we may feel more embodied – more in flow with our body, and more present in its inner spaces. We may also feel more connected with other living beings, with our environment and with something numinous that pervades it.

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Jess’s yoga background

I have been practising yoga since 1981 and teaching since 2003, and am a registered Elder Yoga Yeacher. My first yoga practice was Iyengar, and over the years I've also practised Sivananda and a variety of different hatha yoga styles. I encountered ashtanga vinyasa for the first time in 2001, and this became my regular practice for over 20 years. Ashtanga is the form I’ve been most immersed in and the one that I taught intensively, running led classes, and then Mysore shalas in Greenwich and Woolwich for many years. I also trained to teach yin yoga in 2011, out of which emerged the form I call Still Yoga. While I continue to have a foot on my ashtanga mat, my relationship with yoga is currently in a season of change. Let’s see where it will take me.